Mérida is a beautiful mountain town but mostly I'm just glad for a hot shower. My plan was hiking but it's too rainy so I content myself with just catching up on a few things and relaxing.
Fix a few bits and pieces on the bike, half of which break a few miles further down the road. Post extraneous items home. Post Offices here feel fully Kafka-level communist. Probably a fair judgement on post offices worldwide mind you. Cook. Bread from one shop, eggs from another and vegetables from a third, I can see why they invented the supermarket.
I arrive after the twistiest of rides down in the plains of Los Llanos in a rainstorm and silent lightning. I've let it get dark and the nearest town is called Socopó. The bike is more of an outboard motor as I struggle through water above my knees into a fortress of a hotel with two layers of towering electric security gates to let trucks into the interior which is a glorified car park with cells. I separate all my banknotes and the pages of my passport and attempt to dry them out. Sleep is only possible with earplugs against the roar of the world's loudest aircon.
After the limbo of the last few days I am itchy for adventure and decide to take the off-the-radar road to El Amparo which skirts the Colombian border. Guerrilla country, various people warn me, with pantomimed hold-up gestures. The plot thickens when a gas station won't serve me. Apparently I need some kind of ID card that is issued to combat fuel-trafficking. I am told confidentially that I will probably be able to get gas at El Cantón. I cross my fingers. They tell me they are out of fuel when I arrive and my heart sinks. But then there may be some 5km further they say. But there it is 'No Hay'. After a little more worried questioning I figure out that there will be gas at 2pm, only 1 hour away. I kill time at an eatery nearby and a one-eyed lady offers me her two teenage daughters. I politely decline but I do let them sit on my bike and take giggling pictures of each other.
Finally the army shows up and dispenses gas under the muzzles of their rifles to a scrum of trucks and bikes. Next gas station I have to wheedle with the soldiers for half an hour before they will let me have fuel. The lady who pours it tells the assembled crowd of forty strong that I kissed her. I appear to be the best entertainment they have had around here in a while. At Elorza the soldiers need buttering-up again, this time they lead me to a bloke with a jerrycan around the corner. He doesn't even want paying. He sends me in convoy with two of his friends to his sister's eatery, I suspect a setup but in the end it's just a good feed. This is the principal problem with Latin America, you have to remain vigilant but most of the time people are just being genuinely helpful.
I find Hato El Cedral out in the wetlands. A ranch confiscated by the government, it is an amazing place to see wildlife. Fabiana, my guide, is lovely and we chat chat chat as we wander with the hundreds of capybaras - the world's largest rodent. They rival koalas in their serene cuteness. At the other end of the scale are the caimans and crocodiles, just an armslength away at times in the boat. One I get a little too close to and its evil two-dimensional eyes snap open. I meet an anaconda and feel its muscles flex in my hands. Apparently she could crush every bone in my body, swallow me whole and then vomit up the skin and bones that she couldn't digest. Not very hospitable. I marvel at the little biscuits-on-legs that are the local turtles. There is an anteater and a dizzying variety of birds. I like the scarlet ibis and the huge storks the size of a person that make the trees groan when they land on them. Fabiana sings beautifully and she and her workmate Rolando play guitar and "cuatro'' and we talk politics and the meaning of life into the night.
A stopover in San Fernando and I wander the weird statues of Paseo Libertador and the tent-like church.
A fruitless nightime search for live Joropo, the cowboy music of the plains that I like so, with its harp accompaniment. A Lebanese guy tells me the direct road east is impassable so I head south to Puerto Páez. Out here running of of fuel is a real worry. I'm told the gas station is just across the river. So I cross the Orinoco on a little ferry.
There the gas station is all locked up. The soldier tells me it is less than 50km to the next, which I could still make. Still I try to get gas from a guy playing pool nearby, apparently he should be able to help. He's a crochetty old curmudgeon and after a few questions he snaps shut like a till and tells me he doesn't have any petrol, inexplicably shuffling away. I don't believe him but I do believe that it is 140km to the next gas. Too far on what I have. I ponder my options. The old guy is sitting at a table with some other men and I decide to try peer pressure and ask him for help in front of his friends. They tell him he should help me and he gets up crossly and reappears with a jerry can. After he has filled my tank he wants 5 times what we agreed and we end up in a ludicrous a tug-of-war with a banknote. It's only pride and I relent. Still cheaper than Tescos... So I make the next gas station and celebrate by buying some Joropo CDs pumping at insane volume from some nearby speakers.
As I hit Caicara, the soldiers give me a thorough search. They even spot that my driving licence is a fake which is a first for the trip. I hand over the real one sheepishly. After the third degree, they become very friendly and send me on my way with sweeties, a Chavez propaganda paper and dire warnings about staying out after dark here.
More petrol issues en route for Ciudad Bolívar. I was counting on getting fuel at Maripa but they won't unlock the pumps until 4pm which would have me arriving in the dark. I continue on at 55mph which keeps me in fuel just long enough to make it.
Posada Don Carlos is a stunning building all courtyards in mahogany with exposed adobe and beautiful old knick-knacks everywhere. The one drawback is the doorbell which is so outrageously loud that it feels as if it is directly wired into my spine. Ciudad Bolívar is a nice town on the Orinoco but again there is that creepy Venezuelan sense of curfew at night. In Cambodia I would have gone wandering at night and had all sorts of encounters. Here, Dieter tells me how recently during Carnival, 27 people were shot dead in the drunkenness. I get my hair cut in a roadside tent into a military wedge style which just goes to prove that my Spanish is not improving. As it is easter there is a Passion of Christ reenactment on the riverside with living statues lining the roadside.
Another annoying thing about Venezuela is currency. The exchange rate is set stupidly low so as to get extra cash from tourists so everyone is forced to bring cash and exchange on the black market. In Mérida I bought Bolívares from a guy selling bananas on the corner. Anyway, I am running out of US dollars and am faced with the prospect of using my cards which would mean the effective price of everything doubling. So I get into a complicated dance of bank transfers with my guesthouse which keeps me afloat for a few more days.
More close shaves with running out of gas on the mammoth drive down to near the Brazilian border and the indigenous town of Kavanayen in the chilly hills of the Gran Sabana. I just make it by dusk and the national guard there show me a place I can pitch my tent. Private Sanchez watches me pitch and gives me some of his chewing tobacco 'to keep out the cold'. He decides I am his friend and treats me to various videos on his phone. One of somebody hacking open a turtle's shell with a machete, the poor creature still wriggling, another of a shootout he was involved in with a gang looking like world war three with hails of bullets. Most scary of all is his video of him and his mates beating some robbers with sticks. Justice Venezuelan style. With directions from a couple of Pemón guides, I head to Irawanaimo Merü, a waterfall at the end of some insanely rough tracks, the Tepuy mountains lording it over all, wreathed in mist.
I siesta in my tent in the afternoon, yerked awake by the chanting of an easter procession. In the evening I get drunk on rum and whisky with the soldiers all tooled up with their guns and grenades. Somewhere along the line I get friended by Sanchez on facebook.
I make arrangements on a park bench in Tucupita in the Orinoco Delta with a guy called Antonio. His tiny boat looks rickety but it really shifts.
We speed our way down Caño Manamo to Boca de Mori Chalargo where he lives, the concrete house in the jungle-choked riverside with two little jetties festooned in mosare, floating weed. Parrots perch in one tree and in another are the odd pendulous nests of the Arendajora. A Warao guy, called Matar Gallinas takes me up a backwater to fish for Piranhas. We land 5.
I am feeling very Zen from reading Eckhard Tolle and the peace here is the apposite food. At dusk I am taken across the river to the indigenous village of Wakajara del Manamo.
I am joined by an Austrian man who is not impressed. 'How awful that people live like this is this day and age! No cleanliness!' He is outraged that their houses have no walls and that they have up to 20 children. All I can see is very peaceful, happy people. I ask one man what he did today and he says 'nada!' with a contented smile. I tell him that sounds like a great success. That book is getting under my skin. So are the mosquitos, despite the net over my hammock.
Maybe it's something about sleeping in a hammock but the dawn light brings a tightening of my throat in the same way as it did in La Guajira. I am in a dream. First a hundred calls of insects frogs and birds from the jungle and when my eyes open, the water lapping at my feet, the mosare wreaths sparkling an unreal green and a few yards further dolphins breach the surface.
At Maturin no-one will take my bike in their parking lots. Apparently too many get stolen. This from Fort-Knox-style sealed lots with towering iron gates and ringed with barbed wire. My mind boggles. I finally find a sympathetic soul called Edgar, a bike enthusiast of course. Payment in nerd currency. I just have to talk cc's and tyres for ten minutes but I am well-rehearsed by this point.
Playa Medina near Río Caribe is an idyllic spot. I watch the pelicans diving for fish. One nearly brains me in fact.
In the morning I go to get my bike out from its spot by the pool tables. There is a 45 year-old buick next to it idling, I pack and try not to succumb to the fumes. It is still there running when I come back from breakfast. This is why petrol should cost money.
The Araya peninsula is carved out of desolation.
Halfway across is Chacopata.
Near the salt farms the township of Punta Araya is a project of cookie-cutter houses without rhyme or reason or location.
I take a ferry over to Cumaná and wander the pretty streets of this the oldest colonial town in South America.
All the best towns come with a cat. This one wheedled at least half my breakfast out of me.
It also has a voodoo shop. All kinds of dolls. These ones appeared to be gang members complete with little handguns and smouldering cigarettes...
In Maracay I am outside the only hotel I can find with rooms available and it's way over my budget. Just then a guy comes past drumming on a baking tray. Of course he turns out to be both a musician and a motorbike enthusiast. A friend of his happens by, the judge of a local motorbike race club, Then another biker called Javier and yet another Javier on a sports bike shows up. Quite the petrolhead convention. The upshot is that I end up sharing a hotel room with one Javier and he refuses to let me pay. He and Javier Mk. I take me out for a lovely meal and we end up drunkenly watching the dancers and singers at a Centro Hípico... A great night.
And in the morning we go to a race that Javier Mk.II is in town for. On the way I have the local delicacy of a cachito, a sort of roll with jam inside. Not so sure on this one. With jam I like to be clear that it is jam and not meat. In this case it is wavering in a jam-meat limbo. I enjoy the odd little world of the racing track with the riders poured into their spacesuits and screaming around in circles.
I head into Caracas
to buy some new tyres from an internet buddy. He's away but I find his wife in their apartment building. Initially she assumes I am there to kidnap her and her daughter but she relaxes after a while. It´s late afternoon and I am keen to be out of this notorious crime-riven area of Caracas but I manage to find a Llanteria, a tyre fitter, on the Plaza Venezuela and we form a team to swap the tyres - I take off the wheels sweatily while he levers the rubber onto them.
I arrive in Chichiriviche at the end of a 12km causeway through mangrove swamps and my host has the beautiful name of Aurelio. The town has a lovely ramshackle quality and I wander snapping happily.
I sip beer on the waterfront and read Emma's first draft of her latest film while stalls set up by the pier with bulbs all wired up tenuously from a nearby lamppost.
In the morning I haggle for a boat to Cayo Sombrero and after a bumpy zip across the waves I barefoot it across the hot sand and stake my own personal piece of paradise. The island is another fantasy like the San Blas.
Not quite up to their level but still I can't argue with the blues and the palms and the sand and the coral bones. There is some coral living under there I can see but most of it is dead. A big chemical accident in the 90s apparently.
A sprint for the border, now that I am out of US cash and bleeding from my bank account at the official rate. I am alternately soaked and then baked dry as I head up around the coast and through pretty Coro. From the bridge across the lake the skyline of Maracaibo looks serene but soon I am in the scrum of its traffic pausing just long enough at the Mercado Pulga to buy some CDs of Gaita, the city's own music. A final push up to Sinamaica as the light starts to play beautiful tricks. Smoke from countless fires curl spectral around my tyres and sideways lightshafts transform the fields of plastic trash impaled on cacti into cyberflowers. I careen across the unkempt roads through wetlands and flurries of herons. At one surreal point I am stuck behind a mini-train, the kind that takes tourists around Hastings, winding its way through a monumental rubbish tip, reggaeton blaring from a pair of outsize speakers nestled among the balloons. In Sinamaica a crowd gathers to consider my predicament. The only guesthouse is in the middle of a lake on stilts. No way to get the bike there and nowhere remotely safe to leave it. I have to push on for the border. Apparently the only hotel is there at Guarero. The scraps of daylight illuminate post-apocalyptic villages as I slalom the potholes full tilt. Leaving Venezuela feels like a Steve McQueen chase sequence.
