Day 4 - adventures in Venezuela: sketchy roads and jungle snakes

Finally off the leash. This morning we spent some time body surfing the waves as light rainstorms rolled across the beach. We had lunch and then decided it was time to attempt Cerro El Copey, the island’s highest peak. After negotiating a fare in awful and broken Spanish with the first cabby to come along (less than 10 dollars for a 25 minute cab ride) we zipped at top speeds through the narrow streets of La Asuncion. We eventually came to a halt at the end of a red dirt track next to a brick building, and the cabby asked a local man for directions. It appeared he didn’t know how to get to the main entrance to El Copey. We knew what the place looked like, having seen it the day before on our safari, but we had no idea what the area was called. The old man who was giving the directions then called a younger man out of the brick building, which now made it apparent that it was a shower house. Dressed in only a towel and a wooden rosary, he poked his head out tentatively, offering some advice. Slowly he became more concerned with the gravity of the situation and allowed himself to be coaxed out onto the dirt. He scratched himself and then walked down to our car, finger buried knuckles deep in his nose as if he was trying to fish the directions out manually. The driver seemed to convince them and himself that the way he had come was a way to the peak of El Copey. He told us about 5 times that we could take the dirt path straight into the jungle and when we found the Rio 10 minutes later we would be on the right track – or at least that’s what we thought he said. We set off into the Venezuelan rainforest as the path narrowed. Though we didn’t summit El Copey – who knows if that was even the way up – we did get a closer look at the dry rainforest that flanks these mountainsides. We hiked up the steeps for an hour. The beginning of our hike was marked with one of the largest trees I have ever seen. A species brought here from India. Smooth grey trunk, about as big around as a Volkswagen, The tree stretched to easily over 100 feet high, branching out as far in every direction. Each of the few branches flaring out from the top looked like the trunk of a thick Ontario Beech tree. The buttress roots flared out suddenly near the bottom and the veiny roots plunged into the soil anchoring the behemoth to the jungle earth below. Its size was humbling. We hiked up and up, finding an encampment of adobe and bamboo. We examined breadfruit and wild pineapple before turning around. Our trip was not to be complete though until we saw some sort of brightly coloured Orange, grey, and black jungle snake, one which I have yet to identify. We hiked back out, covered in sweat from the humid rainforest, opting not to be caught in the capital after dark. We walked along the coulourfully housed back streets, smiling at the locals as we went, and smile back they did, latin beats blasting from the backs of their souped up Renaults and Fiats. We navigated the back streets, passing everything from kids playing soccer in the streets to the classic family washing their bus in the river. We wound around to the centre, seeing the first church erected on this island by the Spanish Settlers in the 1600’s, the the pink stucco adobe and even the huge old wooden doors of the church are still original, and it was an amazing thing to see. We took some shots, knowing we would be back Wednesday for our tour of the capital, and caught a dirt cheap cab home.