Venezuela Brazil Guianas – projected trip September 2010.

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.