Day 3 - They have a real desert here

Today was our first day in a desert. We were picked up by Reuben in a Toyota Landcruiser in the morning, accompanied by 2 other couples from another accommodation. We drove around the entire island in one day. Reuben was a stout, English speaking Venezuelan with a comedic disposition. We drove at over twice the speed limit through the narrow South American streets, dodging kids on bikes and other ignorant drivers, slowing down only when the armed guards with blue city camo and fully automatic weapons popped into view. We stopped at a local souvenir shop where Reuben picked up a large map and went over the day’s plans with us. From that point on whenever we got a trivia question right about our next stop he would celebrate “Heeeey you win a Cerveca!” and he would throw back a beer from a cooler he had sitting next to him in the front seat. There was that or there was Ron – a shot of which which Alaina, The Trini (Dean) and I did later on. We first wound quickly up some mountain roads where we got a view of the financial capital, Porlamar. We drove west until the land became more and more arid, until we were surrounded by nothing but cactus. The earth was red and arid, contrasting beautifully with the green sea in the distance. We took the endless desert roads until turning off into the hilly terrain. We bounced through deep ruts as we offroaded our way to a secluded beach. We enjoyed the view before taking off back to the road and having lunch at a small reed shelter of a restaurant at Punta Arenas, the western tip of the island, calm and green was the Carribean sea there. Parrots sat on perches under the ceiling, and our guide took a beautiful Macaw down for us to hold and play with. He perched on our fingers, staring up at us, and he would playfully climb up our arms to our shoulders, using his beak for leverage as he went, but always being gentle. He entertained us over lunch pecking the seeds out of the watermelon desert. After spending some time in the salty turquoise, desert flanked ocean, we hopped back into our vehicle and sped off to a mangrove swamp. We took a boat ride through the swamp, seeing the mangroves, with their roots full of colourful orange starfish. Our boat driver would pull crabs and all sorts of animals right out of the surrounding water. After this long day we drove to a city on the coast which was on the way back. We watched the sun go down behind one of the other islands that make up the state of Nueva Esparta, and thus concluded our Safari. We are tired after this eventful day, but it ws worth the money. We are looking into a Catamaran trip to one of the islands for snorkeling, as it seems that there are no good places off of this island. . .