Great Rivers?

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.

Venezuela Guianas Brazil trip (continued)

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.

Guianas Trip

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