Journey Latin America

My blog is moving

2010-08-02T10:36:00.001+01:00

I've shifted my blog to
http://www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk/papagaio/blog/papagaio.aspx

..so this will be the last one that appears here

Climbing Cotopaxi

2010-02-15T18:15:00.002Z

A few days ago, we had a letter from some clients for whom we’d arranged a trip in Ecuador. Part of their trip was to spend a number of days in and around Quito, doing a number of treks (which become gradually more challenging), culminating in an ascent of Cotopaxi – at 5897m not Ecuador’s highest volcano, nor even its closest to the equatorial line, but unquestionably the most beautifully formed. A perfect cone, permanently snowcapped, and still active. A volcano’s volcano.

These clients had written to say that they felt we hadn’t adequately prepared them for the climb. And they would have liked to have spoken to someone who’d actually done it. For whatever reason, they didn’t get to speak to me. Even if I’m not in the office, I’m usually no more than a phone call away, and even when I’m in South America, email and skype make distances disappear. I’m sorry we got it wrong – especially since I could definitely have given them some insights.

Plenty of ordinary people have climbed Cotopaxi, people who don’t strike you as being mountaineers or super-fit. However, if you’re going to go out from UK and climb it as part of a two- week trip, you need to be prepared.

Determined (goes without saying really), fit (ditto), and prepared.

Prepared is partly to do with kit, and partly to do with the person. All the people I know who’ve done it either live in Ecuador, or have lived for some months at altitude. Quito is some 2800m above sea level. That’s twice as high as Ben Nevis – but only half as high as Cotopaxi.

Acclimatisation is crucial, the longer the better. You need not only to get your body used to the lack of oxygen in the air, but also to doing, at altitude, an activity which you might not usually classify as strenuous. In the UK, I can cycle along quite happily on the flat for a couple of hours or more at 18mph. When I tried it at 2800m altitude (still on the flat, in northern Chile) I averaged 12mph.

Normally, when we sell a client a trip which involves Cotopaxi, we include several days’ hiking, which gets progressively more challenging, in the lead up to the climb itself. When I did it myself, I had 3 days in Quito just walking about at a trade show, and then went straight into it. Big mistake.

Firstly, I didn’t really have the right equipment. My winter cycling gloves weren’t good enough; my windproof “Buffalo” undershirt was fine as a base layer, but the semi-waterproof anorak I had was woefully inadequate. I should have had a heavy duty, breathable, padded warm mountain jacket. My socks were fine for my Zamberlan trekking boots, but nowhere near enough for the sort of temperatures I’d encounter at night, at 5,500 metres, in a howling wind. I had a head torch with me, but the batteries were clearly the ones in the ad where the bunny stopped drumming first. So were the replacements. They don’t like cold either, and it was definitely cold. I had a silk balaclava and an alpaca wool hat. At least my head and ears were warm.

On the big day, we drove to the Cotopaxi National park and had a decent meal at the restaurant at the entrance. I didn’t realise at this point that I should have been loading up on both protein and slow-release carbohydrate as well as fluid, or I’d have eaten and drunk more.

We continued on by car to the car park at 4500m, and arrived at about 2pm. Here I donned the heavy duty mountain boots I’d been provided with, and the proper mountain jacket I’d persuaded them to lend me. It took me and my guide about an hour, with a full pack on my back, to trudge up the ash and cinder track to the Refuge hut at 4800m. (My guide, incidentally, was excellent in all respects.) I managed this fairly easily, and was encouraged to think I’d managed 1000ft without exhausting myself, and knowing that from now on I’d only have to carry a small day-pack with my crampons and water.

After a snack in the cafeteria in the Refuge, we followed the contours round to an ice-field, where I was to have instruction in how to put the crampons on, and how to use the ice-pick. The ice-pick, whilst useful when scaling steep bits, is most important in stopping a slide. There are very few places on the climb where you might “fall off” – there’s no rock climbing; but just sliding down the slope if you miss your footing is a possibility, and you need to know how to halt the slide as quickly as possible.

I also learned how to fit the crampons and do up the straps. Well, how difficult can that be?

Back to the Refuge for an evening meal. This proved to be a fairly meagre affair. A bit of rice and a well-cooked chicken wing, followed by a dish of blancmange. I could have (should have) supplemented it with a few small packets of biscuits. So, a few hours away from the most challenging physical exertion in my life, I didn’t eat enough. Fuel starvation.

The idea is that because the ice and snow are at their most stable at night and in the morning, you climb at night (helps keep you warm too) and descend in the morning, arriving back at lunchtime or before.

The downside of this of course is that you’re doing an energy-sapping climb at a time when your body is expecting to be asleep. And unless you usually go to bed at 8pm, you’re trying to sleep at a time when you’re usually awake.

The Refuge itself is a two-storey wooden building; downstairs is the kitchen and Youth-hostel type cafeteria; upstairs there are metal bunks to accommodate, I’d guess, about 50 people. Bring your own sleeping bag – three seasons’ warmth at least. There were about a dozen of us on the “night” I was there. Wooden floor, and, as I remember, no heating. The toilet block is outside, about 30 metres from the back door.

What happens is that every half hour or so, someone gets up to go to the toilet. The bunks creak; heavy mountain boots clump over the wooden floor, clump down the wooden stairs – and clump back a few minutes later. Ear plugs might have helped me get more than a few minutes’ snatched sleep.

Set off at 12.30am. I’d guess that the incline is about 450 - but the snow-dusted zig-zag cinder path that starts just behind the toilet block reduces the steepness to manageable. Trudge up carrying small daypack with drinks, snack bars, aspirin (headaches common) and after about an hour, maybe more, reach the permanent snow-line – I’d guess at about 4950m [In 2010 I’m told the permanent snow line is at 5050m].

This is where you put on your crampons. This took me about 20 minutes, or so it seemed. This is the point where the realisation began to dawn that I wasn’t firing on all cylinders - even allowing for the fact that, gloves off, my fingers quickly got so cold that I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t work out how to thread the straps through the buckles, or where they went next. I finally managed it as the replacement set of batteries for the head-torch gave up the ghost.

Onward and upward. At least I’d had a rest. There’s a fairly well defined path, and I could see the headlamps of the other 10 climbers ahead or behind of me – mostly ahead. The climbing’s steeper now, picking my way up over ice falls or through snow gullies. After another hour of fairly steady going, my guide encouraging me - “we’re making good time; you can do this” - we’d reached 5050m, (the guide’s estimation – nobody had a GPS or altimeter) and my brain was agile enough to calculate that I had another 850m of altitude to go. The gradient apparently gets gentler towards the top (I never found out) but that was still 8 hours’ climbing. Each step was a fraction more difficult than the last, and was not helped by the nagging doubt I’d had for an hour about being fully in control of my limbs and senses.

This was the moment when I knew I wasn’t going to make it. My guide suggested I take more frequent rests, have something to eat and drink, and that this was often the point where successful climbers become most dispirited. But I knew I wouldn’t make it. I might manage another 200 or even 400m, but I wouldn’t make it. I turned back, my guide with me.

I was the first to do so. Of the 11 that started (excluding guides) 6 turned back, and 5 made it. I can make excuses: I was twice the age of any of the others; I hadn’t slept; I hadn’t eaten enough; I wasn’t acclimatised; I needed better gloves and better batteries.

The truth is, I thought I could get through with just being fit and determined; and I couldn’t.

It was just too difficult.

Epilogue: I did this in October 2003, when I was 57. I’ve met a good few people who’re older than me who’ve done it, and climbed Chimborazo (6307m) too.

If I were to try it again, I’d make I was properly acclimatised. I’d take two head-torches – fiddling around changing batteries at sea level in daylight is bad enough. I’ll leave you to imagine what it’s like up there, in the dark.

And I’d make sure I’d read all the nutrition information that’s now available. What to eat beforehand, during, and in the recovery period on an undertaking like this. There are companies that specialise in these sorts of food supplements, but they’re probably not available in Ecuador.

Would I try again? I might – even though I failed, it was challenging and exhilarating.

And I think I could do it.

Great Rivers?

2010-01-26T18:20:00.003Z

I happened to catch part of a TV programme last night called Only Connect. BBC3 I think. It's a quiz show with two teams and the idea is to connect things, mostly words. Towards the end they have a part of the show where they take vowels out of words, and you have to work out the words as they should be. They help by bunching them together, so at least you have an idea which ball park you're likely to be in.

So when Great South American Rivers came up as a topic, I settled confidently back, certain of a 100% score, being, as it were, on home territory. Now I know it's meant to be a challenging programme, rather than just plumping for questions which will fox only dimwits who don't watch quizzes anyway.

I got two out of four. The rivers were Orinoco RNC, Colorado (CLRD), Maule (ML)and Aconcagua (CNCG)

What?? Great rivers?? You're 'avin' a laugh aren'tcha? Three of those "great rivers" are in Chile. As everyone knows, Chile is confined by the Andes on one side and the Pacific on the other. Long and thin. About a wide as a piece of string. All the rivers flow westward to the sea - so they're about as great as the piece of string is wide. The only thing great about them is that they rise in the Andes. That's like saying the Teign and the Dart are great rivers because they rise on Dartmoor.

A whole continent full of rivers - great rivers - and we get three Chilean becks.

In Argentina, most Welshmen would easily identify the CHBT in Patagonia (they don't bother with vowels much anyway). The PRN, PRGY, RGY are probably a bit too easy.

In Bolivia the BN's a bit more challenging, as is the PLCMY (world's longest tributary of a tributary).

Peru's CYL and MRNN take a bit of thinking about; MGDLN in Colombia is easy. Guyana "land of rivers" should surely have merited a mention for one of SSQB, BRBC or DMRR - all easy.

Now I can see why they eschewed MZN - a bit too obvious - but if they think Maule's reasonable, they why not slip in SLMS (which is what the Brazilians call the upper MZN). Brazil's brimming over - XNG, MDR, SFRNCSC, and if you want a really difficult one, the 4-syllable PQ would be the one to catch them out. Not a great river, but a lot greater than those Chilean melt-water run-offs.

And the CSQR in Venezuela, whilst not actually a river - more of a natural channel linking the basins of the Orinoco and the Negro - could hold its place as an interesting watercourse. If you don't mind the mosquitos and sand flies.

I could go on - or even suggest that the producers of Only Connect come to me if they need inspiration with a Latin American flavour. Mammals of the Mato Grosso? Suburbs of Rio?

On second thoughts, don't get me started.

Coq o' the Roq - Venezuela and Guyanas

2010-01-11T12:01:00.005Z

I see that Venezuela, or rather Hugo Chavez, announced that adjustments (a code-word for devaluation) would be made to value of the Venezuelan bolívar against the US dollar. I guess that means other currencies too, although the President's main beef is with the USA, rather than with Europe.

The first effect this will have is that imports will be more expensive - so anything imported that Venezuelans buy will also rise in price, despite the Chavez's insistence that he'll clamp down on any businesses that try to raise their prices straight away. The devaluation simply reflects a state of affairs that has existed in Venezuela for a number of years, where on the black market you could get well above the official exchange rate

It's an unusual approach, however - a two-tiered rate. A very small exchange rate increase on goods deemed essential, and a doubling of the exchange rate for non-essentials. I can't quite see how this will work, unless it's applied simply as a variable tariff on physical imports.

The commentators in the UK press say that the grander plan is to firstly dampen imports and to boost exports, and make the value of the incoming dollars higher in the local currency. So there'll be "more" money (ie twice as many bolívares)to spend on local projects. These local projects will benefit the poorer sections of society who make up Chavez's electoral support. And the general election is due on 26 September 2010...

This two-tier currency has some affinities to Cuba. There, they have one currency for locals (Cuban peso)and one currency for foreigners (Peso Convertible). The latter can only be bought with foreign exchange - eg by tourists, all of whose transactions are generally in Convertibles. Cubans who receive these have access therefore to things (goods and services) that tourists buy. Strangely, the value of the Convertibe seems to be pegged to the US dollar, but you can't use dollars to buy pesos. Euros or sterling are fine. It also has the effect of making things more expensive for tourists.

Cuba and Venezuela do a fair amount of trade with each other. In simple terms, the most obvious sign of this is: Cuba buys oil and petrol and pays for it in medical services - doctors and surgeons.

I wonder what effect this devaluation will have on the tourism industry in Venezuela? Incoming tourism is an export - tourists bring in foreign exchange. Thus, on the face of it things will be cheaper for foreign tourists, because they'll get more bolívares for their buck. But there's a reasonable chance that Chavez's next plan will be to introduce not so much a two-tier exchange rate as a two-tier retail structure, so that anything a tourist might buy has a premium price.

Of course, he'll be faced with a small dilemma: put off foreign tourists, and they don't come with their euros and dollars. But Venezuela's huge reliance on oil exports for the last 80 years isn't likely to change. That's where they're expecting to reap their benefits. Encouraging tourism has always been low on their agenda.

Bolivia – the world’s most dangerous road.

2010-01-08T08:50:00.008Z

I was abroad last week when BBC’s Top Gear did its Bolivia Special. They drove three second-hand 4WDs, first hacking their way through the rainforest, then up the steep eastern side of the Andes to La Paz. Then they crossed the altiplano towards the Chilean border, before dropping down past snowcapped high altitude volcanoes to the Atacama desert and the Pacific Ocean. Great television - especially for someone who knows the area.

The so-called World’s Most Dangerous Road is the bit where the all-weather road climbs out of the sweltering forest to the foothills of the Andes, and continues up and up through the fertile Yungas – coffee, fruit groves, flowers – to the high pass at La Cumbre, 4675 metres (15330ft) above sea level.

The “Most Dangerous” label came originally from the Inter-American Development Bank in 1995 – and we know now that American bankers aren’t averse to taking a few risks. Now it’s the USP for anyone selling trips down this way. Or making TV programmes.

In those good old 1995 days, the only road (built by prisoners of war in the 1930s) was an all-weather gravel affair (single track with passing places) which clung to the mountainside with vertical drops on left or right. Traffic usually passed even if there wasn’t a passing place. Occasionally (regularly is a better word) there’s a little shrine with blanched plastic flowers, or a cluster of small rusting crosses, where a wheel must have veered just that bit too far off track. El Camino de la Muerte - Death Road.

In 2006, a new wider road was opened, which follows a different route, albeit mostly just a few hundred metres away on the other side of the valley. It’s a properly metalled and asphalted two-lane surface, with bridges, viaducts and tunnels instead of corrugated iron conduits and dodgy rock overhangs. Some of the time you can still see the old road, which is still open, but with much less traffic.

I’ve been along both these roads, both up and down – down on a mountain bike, up in an MPV people-carrier. Both old and new roads are mountain roads, and as you might expect when you climb some 12000 feet in 40 miles, there are bends, and plenty of them. For the most part, the new road sweeps up the right-hand side of the valley, with steep drops on the left. The old road hugs the mountainside on the left of the valley, with sheer and apparently fathomless drops on your right.

Knowing this, and watching Top Gear on iPlayer, set me musing.

On the old road, if you’re ascending you’d be right next to the edge of the abyss. But most of the time the Top Gear lads weren’t. They were hugging the mountainside. From this, it’s evident that they were driving on the left, and it’s certainly true that the convention on the old road is that those coming up have right of way, and those going down give way. Descenders are also on the left, next to the drop...you can lean out of the window and see how close your wheels are to eternity.

I suspect that they also must have actually filmed some of it going down.

The old trick of cinema. Set the scene for going up, and the willing suspension of disbelief does the rest. There’s certainly one scene where Jeremy Clarkson squeezes his Range Rover past on the precipice side, road crumbling away beneath his wheels – great TV, and clearly set up, because they had a long-distance camera filming it.

The convention makes sense. Generally, you descend faster than you climb. If you’re on the outside, and closest to your maker, you’ll naturally slow down if you’re passing someone coming in the other direction.

There are several companies in La Paz which offer downhill mountain-bike full-day excursions – of which Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking is by far the best and most safety-conscious. The latter is important. Whichever side of the valley or the road you’re on, you’re at the bottom of the pecking-order on a bike.

Caption for photograph: The sign at the beginning of Death Road reads " TAKE CARE Mr Driver Drive on the left as far as Caranavi Give way to traffic travelling towards La Paz Keep headlights on day and night Sound your horn before each bend"

Ilha Grande (Brazil) and Villarrica volcano (Chile)

2010-01-05T11:17:00.006Z

A couple of natural disasters in Latin America have made it into the UK press in recent days.

Although it's the hottest time of the year for the coastal area around Rio, it's also the wettest. There are plenty of places where the coastal mountain range comes right down to the sea. On New Year’s Eve/Day torrential rain caused mudslides and landslides which caused loss of life, damage to property and severe disrupution to infrastructure. Particularly badly hit was the large island of Ilha Grande off the coast south of Rio de Janeiro, and Angra dos Reis on the mainland a couple of hours' drive south.

Fortunately, the properties Journey Latin America uses are at Abraão, about 8 miles away from where most of the damage occurred - we did have four clients in Abraão but all are ok, and more travelled to Ilha Grande on Saturday 2 January.

The current situation (as of 4th January) is as follows:

• Weather has improved.
• The Rio-Angra-Parati road closed for 2 hours on 4th Jan but is now open.
• The Ilha Grande ferry from the mainland is operating.
• Things are generally working as normal on Ilha Grande.
• The hotel Pestana Angra, near Angra dos Reis, will remain closed for a week for repair. There was no loss of life at the hotel but a sea wall collapsed.
• The FCO is not advising against travel to the area.

In Chile, in the northen area of the Lake District near Pucón (800 km south of Santiago) there was an avalanche on Villarrica volcano on 2nd January. Fortunately there were no fatalities although a group of Chilean climbers were caught up in it. The volcano is now closed for climbing until further notice, which affects Journey Latin America's Nandú Discovery Journey.

As an alternative, the next best thing is the full-day walk/trek in Huerquehue National park (pronounnced Wear-kay-way) – 6 to 8 hours through stunning forest with views of lakes and the volcanoes, 7-8km up through Araucaria forest – stands of enormous monkey puzzle trees with openings so you can see across the lakes to Villarrica Volcano. For bird lovers, it's a great place to spot (well, try to) the chucao http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chucao_Tapaculo

At the highest point of the walk there are lakes which mirror the monkey puzzles. Then you come back again, often with a stop at the termas (hot springs) on the way back to Pucón.

Next best thing? For many, it's better than the steeper Villarrica trek.

Guyanas trip 2010 (continued)

2009-12-24T09:41:00.015Z

I've at last finalised the route of the journey through Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana - inasmuch as an itinerary like this ever gets set in stone. Click here to read more.

In keeping with the tradition which started in 1980, when we devised our first trips, we've named the journey after an iconic South American bird: Coq o' the Roq. It's a brilliant orange bird which is native to the Guiana shield. The Latin name is Rupicola rupicola, but even non-ornithologists will have noticed that coq is not the usual spelling in English of that word. In the first flush of publicising the trip, we discovered that whatever algorithms web-browsers use to block pornography were pouncing on the hapless English version of our chosen name. So we changed it.

In future I'll also try in this blog to avoid using pictures which have a pre-dominance of flesh tones in their colour balance. Plenty of greens and blues. That should fool 'em.

Another unseen complication. This week, good old president Chavez has decreed that the Angel Falls are no longer to be known as the Angel Falls. Henceforth they shall be known as Salto Kerepakupai-Meru.

Why should this greatest of Venezuelan tourist attractions commemorate a lickspittle Yankee adventurer who chanced upon the falls in the 1930s? They were there long before he got there. The Pemón indians, argues Chavez, knew about them first, even if the rest of us didn't.

I can give the illustrious president a bit of advice here. Don't mess with marketing for the sake of political correctness. 20 years ago, when Journey Latin America first started running an adventure trip to climb Roraima tepuy, in a moment of inspired folly, I hit upon "Archaeopteryx" as a suitable name for the journey.

This was where Conan Doyle had set his Lost World of T.rex and pterodactyls. Archaeopteryx was the name given by palaeontologists to the "bird" which showed the first fossil evidence of birds having evolved from dinosaurs. All the boxes, as they say, were ticked. We'd be able to stick to our tradition of naming trips after birds.

"But no-one will able to pronounce it" protested practically everyone. "No matter" decreed I.

Our few competitors named their trips "The Lost World". So, Señor Presidente, you can probably guess who sold more.

CP

Venezuela Guianas Brazil trip (continued)

2009-09-30T12:03:00.004+01:00

As more information comes in, the tweaking continues.

Firstly, connecting flights. Since we're flying into one airport and returning from another ("open-jaw"), realistically, the options are limited to carriers which serve both cities.

Which means: Air France into Caracas, and out of either Cayenne or Rio. This is likely to be the most expensive, and flying out of Cayenne will mean a change of airports in Paris on the way back (Orly to Roissy Charles de Gaulle).

Cheaper would be Iberia with good connections via Madrid , into Caracas and out of Rio.

Cheapest is Air Portugal, into Caracas and returning from Belem via Lisbon. This would mean an additional 'plane change and several hours' connecting time in Fortaleza.

It's likely that we'll probably cut out Rio at the end - it's a lot of extra flying to have a couple of days in the Cidade Maravilhosa, and lots of our other trips go there. Which will mean ending either in Cayenne or Belem (see above).

In Venezuela, the original plan was to spend no more than a few hours, or an overnight, in Caracas. It's a big city without much to offer, but missing it altogether is probably doing it too much of a disservice. So we'll stay in town, and take a late afternoon flight next day to Ciudad Bolivar, and stay the second night there at the Angostura Hotel.

Going by bus to Ciudad Bolivar means a ten-hour overnight bus, and arriving before dawn. This is supposed to be fun, so we've ditched that idea.

The Alba Hotel in Caracas doesn't get much of write up on web review sites, but most recent comments are from Texans who seem to be beefing more about socialism than hotels. We'll monitor reviews. An alternative is the Melia.

Flights from Ciudad Bolivar to Canaima offer the option either to fly past the Angel Falls on the way in, or not - the difference is that flying past costs a lot more. We're investigating whether our charter flight out towards to Brazil border can incorporate a fly-by.

The canoe trip upstream to the base of the falls is through rainforest, and if you're interested in birds, you'll know that rivers are linear clearings and an ideal opportunity for sightings. As we get closer to the falls, the range of habitats increases; 1000ft sheer cliffs flank the waterways.

The's only one bus a day from the Brazilian border to Boa Vista, so we'll spend a night in Santa Elena de Uairen (Hotel Yakoo), which is on the Venezuelan side about 20km from the frontier. Santa Elena is the starting point for trekkers aiming to scale Roraima tepuy - a six-day round trip which we won't be doing - this time...

Mount Roraima straddles the three borders (Brazil,Guyana,Venezuela), but access is only from Venezuela for trekkers without climbing experience, ropes and heavy-duty back up.

Our journey routes through Brazil and then loops back up to Guyana because a combination of terrain and politics means there's no overland route directly into Guyana

The bus to Boa Vista takes about 3 hours on a paved road. I was last there in 1975, when I remember a newly-built modern frontier town in the middle of open savannah. It will have changed.

So, Venezuelan section is now:

Caracas 1N
Ciudad Bolivar 1N
Canaima/Angel Falls 2N
Santa Elena 1N

Bird lists and Climate charts to follow.

Venezuela Brazil Guianas – projected trip September 2010.

2009-09-25T17:31:00.003+01:00

Whilst this trip is likely still to be in the planning stage for the next few weeks, I think it’s useful to allow everyone to see the engineering which goes into the building of the trip. There’s still likely to be a fair amount of jiggling as we ensure that we’re allowing enough days to get from A to B to C and see what there is to see. But here’s some of what Venezuela has to offer.

Caracas airport is about 20 miles from the city, in the coastal suburb of Maiquetia. We have the option of staying near here (since next day we may be flying from the nearby domestic airport to direct to the Angel Falls).

The alternative we may take is to drive up the spectacular mountain motorway to the city itself. This road passes close to the shanty towns from where Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez garners much of his support. This city of 8 million souls lies 1000m a.s.l. in a long valley between two coastal ranges.

An option we’re considering is getting the bus to Ciudad Bolivar, which gives us a better feel of the lie of the land, and also takes us over the Orinoco by the bridge at the Angostura Narrows. The famous bitters no longer originate from here, though they’ve kept the name.

Caracas is a city ruled by the internal combustion engine – 8 cylinders is no disadvantage when petrol is cheap as chips, and elevated motorways, freeways and expressways seem to dominate every inch of this elongated city.

Either way we end up in the Gran Sabana – a vast and almost roadless region of sheer-sided red sandstone plateaux which is reputed to be the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s Lost world. Sadly, though several places in Latin America have evidence of dinosaur footprints, these flat-topped tepuis have yet to yield any evidence beyond very small lizards.

We’ll be staying a couple of nights at one of the several lodges in the Gran Sabana, and the accommodation is in a pleasant resort where you can swim in the lake from a pink-sand beach. It’s a few years since I was there last – I wonder if the scarlet macaws from the nearby forest are still habituated enough to come and share your breakfast with you.

From the top of Auyan Tepuy tumble the Angel Falls, the world’s highest. We’ll be there towards the end of the wet season, so there’ll be plenty of water – in the dry season the wispy cascades have turned to misty spray after their kilometre fall. There’s a reasonably good chance that the flight into the nearest airport (Canaima) will fly past the falls if the clouds aren’t too many; or possibly when we fly out.

But cloud is quite prevalent in September.

So the plan is to do an all-day canoe trip to the foot of the falls. There’s enough water in the rivers to do this in September. I recommend doing flexibility exercises for a few days before, so you don’t crick your neck looking up. Angel Falls is 979 metres high.

For comparison Canary Wharf is 235m, and the Empire State is 381m. Peanuts.

Beware of the Llama

2009-09-15T10:28:00.009+01:00

Apropos Bolivian road signs warning drivers that an alpaca or llama might leap across the path at any moment, I was cycling in Norfolk last weekend, and passed a road sign warning of toads.

This wasn't one of those signs put up by local residents doing their bit to protect their cuddly indigenous or endemic local fauna. ("Mind our ducks" - usually in Oxfordshire). This was a proper triangular warning sign between Aylsham and Cawston. Clearly, someone in the council highways department had taken the trouble to get the artwork right. This was no vague representation of an indeterminate amphibian.

It was clearly a toad, a toad that any self-respecting witch would have been happy to call a familiar.

I didn't see any live ones in the danger zone (or even road-killed either), though there were a couple of squashed partridges, a squirrel and another rodent in fairly quick succession.

There's a distinction to be made here - those creatures which might cause a serious accident (deer, horses) which drivers need to be warned about, and those which motorists might choose to be merciful to.

Latin America has started to do this too. I'm sure I've seen an armadillo-warning sign near Punta Tombo in Argentina; and in Belize and Cuba, land-crab alerts.

Two years ago, near Trinidad in southern Cuba, tour leader Rose Latham cautiously warned the Tocororo group that our bus taking the coast road would mean mean squashing dozens of crabs (they cross the road in their hundreds); whilst retracing our steps on the inland road would be a much longer drive. The group consensus was "Sod the crabs".

And in Panama -note that road signs are in two languages, since 100 years of Canal Zone influence means that many Panamanians are bilingual - iguanas get their own (zebra?) crossing.

Map and itinerary of planned Venezuela - Guianas - Brazil route Aug/Sep 2010

2009-09-14T11:26:00.016+01:00

Starting either in August or September 2010, the plan so far is that this will be a 22-day trip. It's too early to get firm flight prices, but the cheapest is likely to be on Iberia, via Madrid. The trip itself will start in Caracas and end in Rio, although at this intermediate planning stage, it looks as though it'll be possible to curtail at Cayenne in French Guyana at about day 17.This latter option would mean using Air France, which is £150-200 more expensive for the flight element

What follows is a bald, yet-to-be-embellished itinerary.

We'll fly straight from Caracas on day 2 to Canaima (for the Angel Falls) and stay two nights (2N[days 2-3]), before continuing (probably by light aircraft) to Santa Elena de Uairen (1N [[day 4]) near the Brazil border. We'll travel on by bus to Boa Vista (1N [day5]), before turning north to Lethem and Guyana. The new bridge across the river is built, but the lack of a usable approach road means it still isn't open yet.

[Update 17Sep09 - the Takutu river bridge was officially opened on 14Sep09 - although it has been possible to walk or cycle across for several months]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takutu_River_Bridge

The all-weather road north takes us to Rock View (2N [days 6,7]) and then onward to Iwokrama and its canopy walkway(2N [days 8,9]). Onward to Georgetown (2N[days 10,11]) will either be by air via Kaieteur Falls or by bus - if the latter, then Kaieteur will be done as an optional excursion from Georgetown.

Bus or minibus will take us to the ferry across the Corentyne river to Nieuw Nickerie in Suriname - from where we continue to Paramaribo (2N[days 12,13]). Then on to Albina on the the border, ferry across the river to the old penal colony at St Laurent in French Guyana. It's a paved road for the 200km to Kourou (1N[day 14]).

Next day, there's a boat ride to the Isles du Salut - the most notorious of which is Devil's Island. The old admin block has been turned into a pleasant hotel(1N[day 15])and restaurant. Next day, visit the Space Centre before continuing to Cayenne (2N[days 16,17]).

Another new paved road 190km straight(ish) through the rainforest gets us to Regina and St Georges. The projected bridge, due for completion end 2010, hasn't started yet, so a ferry takes us over the Oiapoque river into Brazil (1N[day 18]). Back to red-earth roads for the bus ride to Macapa (1N [day 19]).

The last two legs to Belem (1N[day 20]), and then to Rio (2N[days 21,22]) will be by air.

View Planned route in a larger map

Bolivia (Uyuni-Potosi-Sucre) Aug08

2009-09-10T12:08:00.003+01:00

Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, is a populist, a man of the people. He has huge support from the bulk of the population - the indigenous people of the Andean highlands, Quechua or Aymara-speaking; from which group Morales himself is drawn. But in August 2008 he had set himself on a collision course with the governors of the eastern/lowland states. The issue was mainly(and still is) the huge tax burden imposed by the government on the oil-producing areas, particularly the wealthy city of Santa Cruz.

The implications of this for us were that, although Rodrigo was confident that we could get through to Potosi, he was very pessimistic about the onward leg to Sucre. Several anti-Morales roadblocks were in place, and there was no getting past them. It was conceivable/possible/likely that we'd have to retrace our route from Potosi back overland to La Paz, instead of making a connection with our booked flight from Sucre.

We opted to risk it. There's a new road (mostly the old one being greatly improved) being built from Uyuni to Potosi, and several of our staff had said that it's not just a road journey, it's a tourist attraction in its own right.

The road out of Uyuni climbs straight into the hills, following, crossing and recrossing the track-bed of the old railway to the silver and tin mine at Pulacayo. Behind us there's a panoramic view of the salar, in a landscape made even flatter by the cloudless sky and noon-day sun.

http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/1814/

Pulacayo is a revelation, a time-warp from a century ago, with the rails, rolling stock, turntable, engines and locosheds sharing the only road into town. A battered sign proclaims that this is the very railway which Butch and Sundance held up and robbed in 1908.

Versions of the story abound: Pulacayo's is that the mine owners themselves hijacked the payroll and miners' (pittance of) wages, and laid the blame on the two Yanqui bandits who were conveniently in the area. Sadly for modern-day Pulacayo, the most widely held view today is that it was not a railway, but a mule-train that was robbed, and that it was closer to Tupiza, to the south, and the bandidos ended up in the cemetery in the tiny mining town of San Vicente.

The old/new road onwards is proceeding apace. There are regular encampments of bulldozers and graders, and tiny communities which were once on the route are now bypassed (albeit an all-weather bypass), unless there's a bridge or a gorge which dictates the route. There are cuttings which slice though several million years of pristine sedimentary rock.

The only roadblocks are official traffic-control ones - yellow dungareed and hardhatted road workers (both men and women) with lollipops slow us when there is heavy plant crossing. There's almost never anything coming in the opposite direction.

Bolivia (Laguna Verde- Uyuni) Aug08

2009-09-09T16:57:00.005+01:00

The final run into Uyuni, the last two hours. It looks like 14 hours will end up being 15. Now the sun is reflecting back from lozenge-shaped yellow roadsigns warning of llamas. Funny that no enterprising Bolivian hasn't started merchandising the image. The Australians are good at that stuff with their kangaroos and koalas, and you can buy them in Piccadilly Circus.

My dormant mobile phone suddenly erupts. A text message from my wife, sent 9 hours ago alerts me that we're back in range. Amazing really, I'm in the middle of a high-altitude sandy desert, in instant touch with my wife who's 100 miles away by means of a signal that, to my untechnical mind, has bounced off a heavenly body that thinks we're both in Britain.

I ponder what Charles Darwin would have though of that. I realise three weeks later in the Galapagos that Darwin would have needed quad-band to communicate from any part of what is now Ecuador. However, tri-band is fine in Bolivia, except down in the far southwest where nothing's in range.

The message is "Wots Spanish for mouse?"

When I translate for Rodrigo, he grasps the implications immediately and his face goes white. He's left his client's wife in a vermin-infested hotel room.

I reassure him that Sue is unlikely to be phased by a mouse. I begin to muse, out loud, how she will have coped with alerting the hotel to the presence of the hapless rodent. I imagine small drawings, and warming to my subject, try my own hand at charades - knowing Sue to be well skilled in this. Without boasting about how well I carry off this miming and squeaking, the result is that both Rodrigo and I are laughing so much that he has to stop the car.

The truth, when we finally arrived, is funnier still: Sue had acted out a similar but much longer performance to a chambermaid who had spent all night drinking chicha at a local fiesta, and was barely on the conscious side of catatonic.

Bolivia (Uyuni-Laguna Verde continued) Aug08

2009-09-07T18:23:00.008+01:00

Two hours' drive southwest of Uyuni en route to Laguna Verde, you leave the main road. From now on we're in low range four-wheel drive. Frozen streams, rock formations that look like ruined red sandstone castles or abandoned medieval Tuscan villages along a distant escarpment; sulphurous mud-pools bubbling - activity influenced by the morning sun, claims Rodrigo.

We stop for breakfast at Mallku, at a small hotel, with stoves fashioned from oil-drums burning gnarled roots - from where? We haven't seen a tree for three hours.

Hotel is rather a grand word for it. It's a cave with a shack built at the entrance, a few rooms with foot-thick duvets, and an empty sun-lounge. Both sun and lounge are not the right words, since by empty I don't mean of people (although they're absent too); there's nothing at all in this part of the hotel, just windows.

The only guests, Swiss I think, but speaking good Spanish, are enjoying their rolls (toasted on the oil drum) and hot Milo (powdered chocolate substitute). They're wearing thick sweaters, overcoats, woollen hats, scarves and gloves. Eating breakfast.

At well over 4000m above sea level, we pass a lake whose name I have noted down as Laguna ...? (you try making intelligible notes at 20mph on a road that seems to be a mixture of sand and talcum powder). The shores are piled high with heaps of snow, or salt. It turns out to be borax. I also make a note to look up borax - what is it used for?

http://www.ballymoney.gov.uk/Household_cleaning_factsheet.pdf

Beyond is Laguna Colorada - colorado/colorada means red in Spanish. Rodrigo tells me there are pink algae in the lake (which the flamingoes feed on, and this makes them pink too...but I'm not convinced). Certainly the lake looks pinkish, but it's greatly accentuated by the reflection from colour of the hills behind. It seems more likely that wind erosion is the culprit. The lake's very shallow, judging by the flocks of flamingoes hundred of metres from the shore. They may be standing in pink sediments.

The point where we turn around (although the track carries on into Chile) is Laguna Verde and the volcanoes of Licáncabur and Juriques. It's just after lunchtime; by the time we've had our packed lunch most of the lake has changed from a dull jade green to brilliant turquoise; you can watch it happening, spreading west across the surface like ice melting. Rodrigo says it's to do with the wind, and it usually happens earlier in the day.

We're the only ones here, but an hour later on the return leg, it's evident that there are a dozen or so other 4WD groups - mostly backpackers having fun in hot springs. I guess they'd preferred this to waiting for the lake to do its party piece.

Rodrigo's very sniffy about these other Uyuni-based tour operators. They're cheap, since most of the visitors are young backpackers; they don't maintain their vehicles properly, they cut corners, they're cowboys.

We pass several, one crawling along belching black exhaust fumes. You can imagine the expression on Rodrigo's face. Two hours' further on, we have no choice but to stop. Rodrigo reluctantly lends one of his two spare wheels to a 4WD full of Australian, Canadian and French. One of them pleads with us for a lift, since we're likely to arrive in Uyuni two hours ahead of them, and he's got a bus to catch. We agree, but then he starts arguing with his Bolivian driver. Even though he's now getting a free lift in a reliable car, he wants his money back.

After about 5 minutes of wrangling, and no agreement, we leave him with his group. Was I that unreasonable when I was 25?

Bolivia (Uyuni - Laguna Verde) Aug08

2009-09-01T12:23:00.006+01:00

The fact that the road infrastructure is still so poor is probably because Uyuni was, for most of the 20th century, one of Bolivia's great railway hubs.

To the west the single-track line still runs towards the Andes, Chile and ultimately to Antofagasta on the Pacific coast. Southwards it continues to Tupiza and Villazón and Argentina (no services or even track beyond the border); and northwards to Oruro and La Paz. The line eastwards towards (but not to) Potosí was dismantled years ago.

But in fact, the road south-west is a good, all-weather affair, although I didn't follow it all the way to Avaroa/Ollagüe on the Chilean border. At San Cristóbal, a Canadian company is mining silver, and they're probably funding road maintenance.

By day three in Bolivia, my wife had succumbed to altitude sickness. We warn all our clients about not flying into altitude, not overdoing it, taking time to acclimatise, so of course I, on her behalf, completely disregarded that sound advice.

Although Rodrigo carries oxygen, she opted to stay in bed for the day. That morning, the two of us set off at 4.30am to do the 14-hour off-road (off all-weather road that is) round trip to Laguna Verde (green lake) and near-perfect cone of Volcan Licáncabur. Both are at the far south-western tip of Bolivia, near the Chilean border. We usually allow two days for this.

I don't know where Shakespeare got his inspiration for his lines in Romeo and Juliet "jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain top", but he probably never got to this part of Bolivia.

I've occasionally, even in Britain, seen hillsides catch the dawning sun. But you need to be facing west on a high flat plain at the very instant that the sun rises, to catch it dancing tiptoe, for a few seconds, on the very peak.

So, Shakespeare must have just imagined it.

Bolivia (La Paz-Uyuni) Aug08

2009-08-27T15:30:00.012+01:00

It's exactly a year since I was in Bolivia. I did a big circle - flying into La Paz, then driving in a 4WD with Rodrigo Garron, our man on the ground.

We went south across the altiplano to Oruro (good paved road all the way) and on by an increasingly poor dirt track to the huge salt flats (salar) at Uyuni. The whole-day journey is over terrain which varies little from an altitude of 4000 metres

We stayed in one of the three hotels there which are built almost entirely of salt blocks, on a low bluff overlooking the salt flat. Flat is the word. Almost incandescently white until the sun sets, and stretching 70 miles to the western cordillera of the Andes, the crust is thick enough to support a vehicle's weight.

If you plonked the salar down in the middle of the English Channel, you'd be able to drive all the way from Portsmouth to Cherbourg

It gets bitterly cold at night. Fortunately, the hotel Luna Salada has central heating, and each bed has duvets which are a foot thick. I'm not exaggerating.

Over the last year, the UK press and media have begun to notice that the concentrated brine beneath the salt crust Salar de Uyuni holds some 50% of the world's resources of lithium.

Lithium is what they use for lightweight, high-power batteries, which we are told will be running the green cars of the future.

The Bolivian government (and in particular the populist president Evo Morales) are very keen that the Bolivian people, rather than foreign corporations and a handful of already-rich Bolivians, should benefit from the exploitation of this resource.

There's already a scramble among other nations to befriend the Bolivians. Japan, France, Brazil and Venezuela have all thrown their hats (or their entrepreneurs' hats) into the ring.

I noticed a few days ago that a Brazilian engineering group had been granted the concession to build a new road in Bolivia's Amazon lowlands. Maybe they're taking the roundabout route to having their feet under the table next time... To exploit Uyuni, Morales will need a new railway or highway - it's a hard place to get to.

As is Bolivia - landlocked, no direct access to the sea, and not always on the best of terms with its neighbours. Its isolation is one of the reasons it's still such a haunting place to visit.

Guianas Trip

2009-08-04T14:08:00.007+01:00

To commemorate the company's 30th birthday, in the late summer of 2010 Brian Willams (who was there at the start) and I are planning to run a couple of Escorted Group trips in "the old style".

That actually meant, in the old days, trips with a very minimum of advance planning, so clearly doing any preparation work done now in August 2009 already belies the concept...

Brian will be doing Welsh Patagonia, travelling westwards to cross the Andes near Trevelin into Chile and the Carretera Austral - the great southern highway. Construction of this road started just a few years before Journey Latin America was created. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carretera_Austral. Brian speaks Spanish and is a native Welsh speaker.

I'll be following a linear route through Venezuela's Gran Sabana to northern Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, and back into Brazil. What roads there were in these parts in the early 1980s were compacted red-earth and certainly not all-weather. Things have improved since then, but there's a good a few ferries across the larger jungle rivers. I don't speak any Dutch, but I'm reasonably competent in the other four languages.

As the research develops into a plan, and the plan into an itinerary, I'll post updates - there may be a a few abandoned backwaters along the way, as my wish-list gets trodden on by practicality. CP

An introduction

2008-08-19T13:12:00.004+01:00

Welcome to the new blog from Journey Latin America, written by me, Chris Parrott.