"Venezuela is an extremely dangerous country. Don't trust anyone, including the police." So advises a fellow passenger to British travel writer and adventurer Jamie Maslin as they prepare to board a flight to Caracas. The obliging fellow traveler adds more caveats about his country. "It has roughly fifteen thousand homicides a year, the national institutions are rife with corruption, it suffers infuriating power cuts and the president is a 'baboon'. " |
"What do you want to go there for?"
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 With that intimidating question, vacationing Maslin begins his account of his odyssey to South America's perplexing, oil-rich republic of Venezuela with its record number of beauty pageant Queens, its infuriating firebrand anti-American president Hugo Chavez, and its stunningly beautiful natural attractions.
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The dust jacket of his book, "Socialist Dreams and Beauty Queens: A Couchsurfer's Memoir" summarizes the adventure:
"Alone in the crime capital of the world, Maslin immediately finds himself in trouble--arrested by knife-wielding police officers and inoculated with an unwanted vaccination. After a terrifying start in Caracas, he soon leaves the teeming city and travels to the places tourists never see...(on the way) meeting everyone from fervent social revolutionaries to the country's wealthy elite. By bus, taxi, canoe, and on foot, he sets off in search of mile-high waterfalls, flat-topped jungle plateaus, rolling deserts...Maslin offers a fascinating and timely social, cultural and historical introduction to a country increasingly in the headlines."
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A piece of the adventure: A side trip to Angel Falls
We are pleased to excerpt one highlight of his Venezuelan adventure: a visit to spectacular Angel Falls in the country's remote interior. The falls are located in an isolated jungle of Venezuela, and a flight from Puerto Ordaz or Ciudad Bolívar, capital of Venezuela's southeastern Bolivar State is required to reach Canaima , the rainforest camp and starting point for river trips to the base of the falls.
The flight crosses over the Gran Sabana National Park, vast plains punctuated by the amazing tepui tabletop mountains, among them the giant Auyán Tepui and the awesome Angel Falls that leaps out from Auyán's high cliff to drop its waters 3,211 uninterrupted feet to the valley floor.
The first non-native to discover the falls was the American adventurer James Crawford "Jimmie" Angel, who crashed his plane on the tepui. He never found the "Lost Golden River"--most probably a rich ore bed--that inspired his adventure but he did locate one of the world's natural wonders. |
In his own words, Maslin describes his impressions of flying in a small overloaded Cessna aircraft over an uninterrupted carpet of rainforest to the jungle base camp village of Canaima:
"...our airplane rode a bumpy band of turbulence, its engine wailing like a mosquito, varying in pitch as it rose and fell with the ever-changing tropical air pressure...suddenly the clouds cleared, the turbulence ceased, and we flew into a different world. Below us, stretching out to the horizon was an unbroken sunlit vista of pristine Venezuelan rainforest, which...appeared like a canopy of moss... Breaking up the expanse of green was the occasional colossal silvery skeleton of a deceased but still standing... grandfather tree--ghostly wooden towers that (remained) as much a source of life in death, for bugs, insects, birds, etc. as they were when alive."
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| "The river twisted this way and that, sections of which narrowed dramatically, revealing new wondrous sights with every meandering turn: islands, secluded beaches, unknown exotic birds, alien-like trees, thatched huts with obligatory bowing hammocks. But most dramatic of all were the tepuis. We passed close by several of these enigmatic sandstone and quartzite mountains, jutting vertically from the jungle, towering ominously overhead in colors of rusty red and black,,,Their mist-shrouded peaks bringing to mind mythical temples of the gods." |
"Soon...the guide at the front of the canoe turned around and pointed to a distant towering tepui with a river of water cascading down from atop. He didn't need to tell me what it was. The closer we got to Angel Falls, the more magnificent it became. It was insanely high, measuring 3,211 feet in total with a continuous drop of 2,647 feet--sixteen times higher than Niagara Falls--making it by far the highest waterfall on Earth.
"We moored up opposite the base camp where several open-fronted huts were located. The waterfall was still some hike away...One of the guides accompanied us...He led us off into the dense jungle along a thin twisting path. |
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"After abut forty minutes of hiking through the forest, stopping off occasionally en route when the guide pointed out a plant, vine or spider of interest,...we arrived at Angel Falls. Stretching up nearly a kilometer into the air was the table-topped mountain, Auyán-tepui, from which a hydrant of tumbling water spouted from a central cleft, dropping all the way down to the ground through an arching rainbow. Its height almost defied belief. Under it you could fit two and a half Empire State Buildings.
 "The rocks, forming the backdrop behind the falling ever-changing water, were an artist's palette of colors: pink, red, orange, gray, black and brown...a myriad of shades in between. Framing the picture above was a deep blue sky mottled with fluffy white clouds, and below me spread the vibrant green of the forest floor.
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| "When the clouds permitted and sunshine ruled the sky, the rainbow would appear--as if a final finishing flourish on a masterpiece of artwork. It was truly a natural wonder of the world. And I stood transfixed, in awe and humbled." |
And the journey through Venezuela continues: |
Maslin summarizes his odyssey with this thought, "...I hadn't come here(to Venezuela) just to have a romp around spectacular landscapes or to lie on sun-drenched beaches. I'd wanted to get a feel for the place and its people, to discover their attitude to the changes being made to the country by Hugo Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" and the "participatory democracy" he had introduced."
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For the full story:
And this is just an abbreviated sampling of Maslin's tale. You will enjoy the full account of this up-and-coming travel writer's often eye-widening exploration of the amazing--and pivotal country of Venezuela (think 'oil') by going to http://www.amazon.com.
Click on book cover for a direct link to Jamie Maslin's page on Amazon.com. |
PHOTO CREDITS:
Sabrina Durling-Jones, Paur Rideough, Charles Brewer-Carias, Jamie Maslin
Credit Wikimedia Commons: Guillermo Ramos Flamerich, J. Quintero
(Note: Photos credited to Wikimedia Commons do not appear in Jamie Maslin's book)
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South America