The Wimbeldon Tour

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10 Poms, 2 Danes, an Aussie and a Scot board a zebra painted bus at 6am in the Venezuelan town of Merida. The punch line was delivered many times by their Steve Irwin of the butterfly world guide, Alan from Barbados.

A waterfall, rubbish tip, visit to a cuban family who refine sugarcane for a living, a chicken feast and 8 bumpy hours later we left the zebra behind and boarded speed boats to tour along the river banks leading to Lago de Maracaibo. We zipped past raincloud forests jumping with toucans, hawks, macaws and one baby caiman. Look!!! (Another bird). The river led to the largest body of fresh water in South America, Lago de Maracaibo (just pips Lake Titicaca). A spine crunching hour across the rough lake took us to its calm epicentre, Catatumbo, where the high pressure from extreme humidity creates a bizarre phenomenon of nearly continuous lightning 280 nights of the year. We were hoping for one of the 280...

We set up home for the night to watch the lightning show on the verandah of a government pilafito (house on sticks). The local community are fishermen and live in small groups on these basic pilafitos on the water. Seems a simple but happy life as we watched the kids paddling around in washing tubs and old car seats. They all waved and giggled at us and got over excited in their attempts to wow us with sommersaults into the water - very cute. Unfortunately our camera battery ran out at this point!
With no sewerage system other than a hole leading to the surrounding water, swimming was off limits unless we were looking to take a serious course of antibiotics...Having grown up here the kids were obviously immune. By midnight the clouds had rolled in and a few flickers of lightning looked promising during the night. Our guide told us to get some sleep and he´d wake us up for the big show. Easier said than done... Our bare bones accom consisted of hammocks covered in mosquito nets which made breathing in the unbarable humidity impossible. After 1/2 an hour of sweat dripping from every inch of skin we decided to get up and move to the concrete dock platform where there was a very welcome breeze. Home sweaty home (below)

Lying beneath the stars was beautiful, even if the concrete was a bit hard (and cockroach infested). Wondered how on earth the others were getting any sleep in their sauna cocoons until slowly one by one everyone filtered out to the dock and laughed to find they weren´t the only ones struggling afterall. Were rewarded sometime after one o´clock in the morning with some pretty spectactular and eerie lightning. At 20km away Alan assurred us we were safe despite the fact that the palifito 15 metres away no longer existed as of a month ago!

No rest for the wicked we were up at 7 the next (or same actually) morning to lay down butterly bait in the nearby conga river. Very stinky balls of rotten fruit is a big attraction for these critters and we saw some pretty impressive butterflies (Alan´s specialty) which he stood on the end of the boat and swang at with his butterfly net while we called out "Crikey!" and generally hassled him. His baby is the "Queen" butterfly which he discovered and is planning to name "Alane". The photo of Alane below is contraband until he puts out his $300 book so keep it under wraps ;-) (The Emperor - left, Queen Alan - right)


Were motored to a cleaner part of the lake where it was safe enough to swim - very nice as we were all feeling a bit sticky by this point. After a bit of a hammock siesta we headed back to land by boat around sunset and spotted families of howler monkeys in the trees along the way. Their howl is a curious mix between continuous burping and loud tummy rumbling. By the time the sun set Alan was back in top form standing on the bow of the boat ready with his trusty butterfly stick. He wrestled a baby caiman for us and let a few brave ones in the group have a hold. Next beastie on Butterfly Irwin´s list was to catcha snake for us. He managed to get a "ltl fella" brown tree snake wrapped around the pole of the net. It was a strong reptile and stood half its body rigidly upright when it was ready to jump off the pole. At this point Kaz quickly tucked her bare feet up onto the seat - uuurrrrrgh!

After all the past 2 days excitement we had a long bus trip back to Merida (left). A brief and very sleepy roast chicken stop where Peter (pom) was kissed on the head and "blessed" by a random rante, a few potholes and unmarked speed humps later we were in bed after midnight and asleep well into Sunday afternoon. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.....................

Rounded off our time in Merida with a hike around nearby lakes.This was somewhat complicated by the bus dropping us off above the cloud level making sightseeing a little difficult but the walk back down the hill towards Merida through pretty mountain villages with beatiful views more than made up for it.

Next stop Los Roques, for a bit of Carribean sun.

love, Kaz and Stu

Gaffe of the week: interesting choice of names...

Sight of the week: Stu, after Mother Patty´s attempts to shield him from the downpour