DIA DOS

We all sleep late and head downstairs around noon to find a wonderful brunch already prepared and waiting for us on the patio. Traditional chicken/corn/potato soup called chupe, some bread, ham, and more white cheese.

"Meat and cheese, and that's about it". So far, Anabella was right.

After brunch we open Christmas gifts with the immediate family. More Jacques Torres chocolates from us for her folks. Anne gave Anabella this cool book of art made entirely in the Excel program. I gave Cheo a book of 12" record covers and five CDs: The Bad Brains first album, "Machine Gun Etiquette" by The Damned, and three classic Jeff Beck albums from the 70s. Anne and I have agreed that the trip itself would be our gifts to ourselves, so we exchange nothing.

Afterwards we run some errands and pack lighter bags for our five-day excursion to Canaima and the Orinoco River Delta. We have a 5:30pm flight to the southern City of Ciudad Bolivar, where we will spend the night and take an early morning connecting flight to Canaima.

The flight was about an hour on a small Rutaca airliner. We were met at the tiny Ciudad Bolivar airport by the tour agent, Ruben. He didn't seem to own a car, but he brought two taxis to pick us up. A family of three was already sitting in the two-door Jeep. Rueben and a driver filled the front seat of the old, beaten-up, American muscle car coated in rust. Some kind of Chevy from the 70s I'm guessing. The driver opens the trunk by slowly picking the lock with a screwdriver. Hilarious.

Ciudad Bolivar is the capital of the state of Bolivar, which occupies the south-eastern chunk of Venezuela. It sits on the banks of the Orinoco river, which originates in Colombia and snakes north-eastward through Venezuela to the Atlantic Ocean. It is best known for the modern Angostura suspension bridge, built in 1967. It is hot and humid.

Our driver tells us it was once a nice place to live, but has been recently over-run by Colombian drug traffickers who use the river to ferry drugs from Colombia, through Venezuela, out to the Ocean and beyond. He volunteers a rather fucked up story about his brother, the chief of Police. His brother recently replaced the last chief of police, who resigned in terror after he orchestrated a big drug bust that got his entire family killed in retaliation. Soon after the driver's brother reluctantly took the job, a fat Colombian man strolled in to headquarters, sat on the desk, and told him how things were gonna go.
"The city is yours, but the river belongs to me" the fat man declared "Don't fuck with me, and we won't have a problem"
He then proceeded to rattle of the addresses of the police chief's entire family in Caracas, just in case he was thinking about calling his bluff. Damn.

We drop our bags off at a quaint posada (bed and breakfast) in the hills overlooking the city. We quickly get another taxi in to town to get some grub. As soon as we get in the car, the driver puts in a DVD that plays on the small flatscreen TV mounted on his dashboard. It's a Backstreet Boys video. That song that goes "Every-baaaaahhh-day.........Rock yo baaaaaahhhh-day........Back...Street...Boys...ALRIGHT!!!" WTF?!? The next video is by Dido.
"She is my girlfriend!" he excitedly announces.
Whatever hombre. This must be the DVD he puts in for Americans or something.

He takes to us to "calle del hambre", the "street of the hungry" - a long strip of open air restaurants and food carts, interrupted here and there by makeshift tarp-covered stands selling boot;leg CDs and DVDs.
"Every city in Venezuela has a calle del hambre" Cheo explains. What a great name for a street.

It's Christmas night and the calle del hambre is jumping. The streets and parking lots are a mess of gridlock traffic, as every local with a pickup truck or muscle car is cruising the block, blasting reggaeton, bachata, and merengue. We sit at one of the stands and eat grilled meat sandwiches on a huge hot dog bun. A cross between a Philly cheese steak and a hot dog, I guess. There are crunchy, super-thin french fries under the meat. The whole thing is smothered in ketchup and mustard and it's fucking delicious.

I start to notice a few locals recognizing Cheo, but they keep a respectful distance. I was wondering what the level of rock stardom would really be out here in the sticks. So far it seems quite manageable.

We stroll around for a bit after dinner, checking out the bootleg DVDs. They put four or five movies on each DVD. They usually group these movies by genre. I notice one that has five Nazi movies for the price of one. Cinco para uno! American History X and a bunch of other skinhead jail movies. Fun!

Being wary of hailing a cab off the street, we call the Backstreet Boys guy to come pick us up, so we can get some sleep before our early morning flight to Canaima.

DIA TRES

The plane ride to Canaima is cool. A tiny 6 seater Cesna. The pilot keeps slamming the dashboard with his fist, because it is falling in to his lap a bit. He is speaking Spanish and another language that sounds a bit like Chinese. Apparently it is the local indigenous dialect, Pemón. We fly over vast, flat forests, lakes, and plains, with few roads and only an occasional farm house in sight. Apparently you cannot drive to Canaima, as there is no road. That sounds crazy to me. I guess the rivers are the roads way out here.



We see the Canaima lagoon from above as we fly in. A sight to behold indeed. A long, winding wall of incredibly powerful, roaring waterfalls feed the lagoon, creating hazy clouds of mist roving over the water.



Canaima is a giant national park about the size of Holland. A small town on the edge of a giant fresh water lagoon is the base of all tourist operations in the region. It is best known for Salto Angel (Angel Falls), and the giant table-top mountains called tepuis (teh-pooheys) that define the landscape. These tepuis are believed to be the oldest rock formations on the planet; remnants of the great land mass that once joined Africa and South America two billion years ago (!). They tend to be isolated, rather than clustered like mountains, which has allowed the ecosystems on the top to remain practically unchanged since pre-historic times. Thus they are host to all sorts of weird flora and fauna found nowhere else. I was dying to hike to the top of Ayuantepui, from which angel falls originates, but this takes ten days. Instead we will take a canoe up the Rio Carrao and view the falls from below, as so many tourists have done before us.



Once we land, we wait under the grass hut airport terminal for our guide to show up. There are about forty people - tourists and locals - hanging around. Women with babies on their laps are selling beads. A guide from another tour group asks Cheo if she can take a picture with him. Several people in the airport seem to recognize Cheo. He obliges without hesitation.

Our guide eventually emerges from a trail in the woods off to the side of the runway. We pick up our gear and follow him, heading towards the posada where we are to stay. I figure the guide will have some kind of big, gnarly, jungle jeep to drive us there. He does not. We walk. I find it hilarious that the main access to the airport is a dirt footpath through the woods. No taxi. No bus. No monorail. No "train to the plane". Oh well.

Our posada is only about a quarter mile away. It looks more like a small, one story motel. It has thatch-covered walkways between white, concrete buildings. The posts supporting these thatched rooftops are oddly adorned with spiky palm leaves, jutting perpendicularly out in to the walkway. Many of these palm leaves are precisely at eye level, positioned perfectly for stabbing you square in the retina. Without my sunglasses I would surely be blind. What a fucking strange way to decorate.



We drop our our big bags in our assigned rooms and pack a small bag for the overnight excursion to Angel Falls. We are now in the tropics, only a few hours from the equator. It is hot and humid and it feels great. Within the hour we rejoin Angel, our guide, and a few others: three Italians and four Germans.

We take a five minute jeep ride around the lagoon and up past the waterfalls. From here we will to get in one long canoe and head upriver.

The first thing you notice is the water. It is dark orange. "Like a cuba libre" our guide jokes. This is the result of tannin in the soil.

As we travel upstream in to the jungle, the second thing you notice is that there are almost no birds. The occasional vulture, and a few, small, rust-colored birds, but that's about it. Angel explains that the tannin in the soil prevents fruit trees from growing, which basically means no animals.

An entire rainforest jungle with no animals. Something kinda creepy about that.

Our guide, Angel, really seems to know his shit. He talks to each group fluently in their own language. He says he speaks eight languages, including Japanese. His Italian sounds a lot like Spanish. Actually, I think maybe it is the Venezuelan Spanish that sounds a lot like Italian. They speak with a similar bouncy rhythm here. Angel is a small, compact fellow with dark chocolate skin. His mouth, eyes, and nose seem a bit too small for his already small head. He totally reminds me of the oompa loompas in the Johnny Depp version of "Willy Wonka" (side note: they had one Indian midget play every single oompa loompa in that entire film. Apparently the midget community was outraged that they had only employed one single midget, duplicating him over and over. Outraged! The world has gone mad I tell ya).

Angel speaks very, very clearly and repeats everything he says at least four times. I guess dealing with dumb-ass tourists will do that to a person.
"All you need is four things: bathing suit, sun block, mosquito repellant, and a camera". He says this more like twelve times, counting on his four fingers each time, for each item. His delivery was that of a kindergarten teacher speaking to slow kids.

The journey up the river is beautiful. There is nothing else around. No houses of any kind. Just the occasional long boat passing us in the other direction. For being the number one natural landmark in all of Venezuela, it sure is quiet.

Anne and I let out a simultaneous sigh that translates as "ahhhhhhh....back in the jungle!". Why I love jungles so much, I have no idea. I suppose I feel as far from civilization as I can possibly get. It reminds me that the entire earth is not concrete and cellphones and sky scrapers and Photoshop. There is a whole jungle ahead of me that couldn't care less about those things. This is comforting.

We get out of the boat after about an hour, because the rapids are going to be too strong to navigate with such a full load. The driver will take the boat through the rapids and meet us in 30 minutes, on the other side of a wide stretch of savannah. Everyone is glad to be getting out of the boat, having run out of positions that will keep our butts from falling asleep. the Italians seem particularly relieved, as they can now smoke, which they are inclined to do whenever possible.




The savannah is peaceful. A wide open plain that looks like something straight out of Africa. Tall, dry grass, white sand, and the occasional solitary, twisted, stunted tree offering the least amount of shade possible. And still, no birds. Just little yellow and green butterflies. One forgets how seldom one gets to stand in truly wide open space. Ayuantepui is now closer, the tallest reaches of the mountain obscured by low, misty clouds. You really feel like you are walking in to the wild.

Four indian boys appear on the horizon and pass by silently.

Angel stops to overturn a large termite nest.
"The indians eat these for protein" he says. "they also make medicine with them. It eases breathing"
He lets his hand be over-run by about 100 termites and holds it up for us to smell and/or eat. His termite-covered hand actually does smell like Ben Gay.
The Italians step forward and start popping termites in their mouth like sunflower seeds.
"Crunchy!"
The four of us stand and watch with low-grade revulsion. Anabella, embarrassed that she is being shown up by a bunch of tourists, steps forward and quickly eats a few. The grimace on her face is priceless. She did it for Venezuelan pride, dammit! The United States got no such gesture this day.



Once across the savannah, we get back in the boat for an additional three hour stretch.

As soon as we leave the beach, Angel hands our lunches to us. Two stale hot dog buns with a paper-thin slice of ham and a paper-thin slice of cheese and no condiments whatsoever. It is like eating a big, long, wad of cotton. There should be a universal law banning sandwiches without mayonnaise or mustard or some god damned condiment. I mean, NOBODY likes a bone-dry sandwich. Nobody.

The further up river we go, the closer we are to Ayuantepui. It is a huge, complex mesa, with seemingly countless outcroppings. As we come to various clearings, we think we're seeing another tepui, but really it is all the same mountain. The river just winds in and around each canyon, following the contours. Sometimes the mountain lies ahead of you. Sometimes on your right. Sometimes behind you. It's very disorientating. When we reach a wide stretch of river, we can see a great, long chunk of it. And this is only one little piece. Crazy.



We reach our destination just as the sun is dropping behind the mountain. Our camp is situated at a fork in the river, directly in front of Angel Falls. Angel tells us the morning hike through the jungle will take about an hour. The camp is pretty bare bones: a 40x20 foot, corrugated tin shelter about 100 feet from the riverbank. The broken up remnants of stairs, destroyed by a high tide, block the entrance. Previous travelers have worn a trail that circumvents the rubble in order to get in to the shelter. About twenty hammocks covered in mosquito nets hang from the ceiling. There are two small bathrooms in a shack off to the side, a long picnic table, and a tiny kitchen with a wood burning stove. There is no electricity and no running water. I am starting to understand why this place is so devoid of tourists. It is relatively unaccommodating and most decidedly unapologetic. Don't feel like roughing it? Don't bother coming. I suppose I am thankful for this. Were this America, there would be a parking lot full of SUVs and mobile homes right at the base of the falls.

After claiming two hammocks for Brooklyn, we head back down to the boat. Angel offers to ferry us to the other side of the river, so we can get a better view of the falls and take some photos before sundown. It was starting to get cloudy.

I wander in the shallow water as some of the others come down to the river bank. I was looking for fish. Instead, much to my surprise, I found chicken. Four chickens to be exact. They were just floating there, bobbing up and down in one foot of water, between two wet logs.
"I think I just found tonight's dinner" I announced.
Everyone thinks I am joking.
I am not.
The river was clearly the de-facto fridge as well.
"Pollo de Rio!" Cheo exclaims.
Hilarious.
Everyone has a look on their face that says "I REALLY wish you hadn't told me about that".



After taking a few photos and being ferried back to our side, we hang out on the river bank as the sun goes down and wait for our river-chicken to be cooked. Two local Indians are the kitchen crew. They have split open the birds and impaled them on four sticks suspended over a makeshift bonfire. They smell good already.

Either that river-chicken is really delicious, or we are all just really hungry. Maybe it's the cube libre brining process. Either way, there are no complaints.

The whole day of travel: first in the tiny plane, then sitting in the hot sun in that cramped canoe, has left us rather exhausted. We gobble down the pollo de rio by candlelight and hit the hammocks immediately afterward.

"The trick to sleeping in the hammock is to... 'vvvvvvvttt'...sleep on an angle".
Angel says this about six times, making a little sideways motion with his index and middle finger when he made the 'vvvvvttt' sound. And he was right. Sleeping diagonally does make a world of difference.

It rains through most of the night. The sound of the rain and the rushing river is beautifully soothing, This is juxtaposed with the intense stench of urine emanating from the out house each time the wind shifts. The mosquito net is a bit claustrophobic, but I don't dare expose myself to whatever creepy crawlies may be lurking on the other side. No way.

DIA CUATRO

We wake up at 5:15am for the one hour group hike to the falls. The sun is just coming up. Breakfast is black coffee and some stale crackers. Angel prepares us for the hike.
"you're gonna wear your hiking boots, as there is mud, a lot of root, and it's a little bit uphill".
He said this eight times in a span of ten minutes, counting on his fingers and making a little uphill gesture with his palm each time. Anabella and I roll our eyes each time.

The hike through the rainforest is beautiful, but a bit eerie. Being in a rainforest that is completely silent is just...I don't know...weird. The only sign of life is mosquitos and the occasional spider web. Other than that, it can all be a hologram for all I know. The complexity of the roots on the jungle floor is pretty damn cool. Countless roots. All intertwined. As if all the trees are part of one giant organism.

We reach the falls in just under an hour. We are the only people there. Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall on the planet, most famous natural landmark in all of Venezuela, and there are only twelve of us. Amazing.



As expected, it is indeed pretty awesome. And I mean awesome in the sense that the word was intended. Makes you realize just how overused the word is. Awesome pizza and awesome giant jungle waterfall are two radically different entities, this I can attest to.

We sit on a large rock overlooking the valley below the falls and gaze in silence at the natural wonder before us. The water falls so far that is just an amorphous, misty cloud by the time it reaches the bottom. I try several times to visually pick out one watery clump at the top, and follow it with my eye, down to the bottom, but it just dissipates in to the mass and I lose track.

I really want to hike up to the base, but Angel says this as close as are allowed.
"Sometimes we swim in one of the pools below" he says "but today, the current is too strong. You get wash over the rocks. No good today".
Fair enough.

We stay up there for about a half hour, taking photos and trying to imprint the majesty of the place on our brains. Trying to soak it all in. Record it all. How many giant waterfalls does it take to balance the thousands of hours I sit in front of a computer screen? I have no idea, but it's probably more than one. Still, this is a big waterfall, so maybe it counts for, like, a hundred regular waterfalls. Maybe more. Take THAT cursed computer screen!

We actually have a real breakfast waiting for us when we get back to camp. Arepas y huevos. Anne keeps asking for the hot sauce. The Europeans look at her like she is nuts, putting hot sauce on her eggs. She is nuts, mind you, but hot sauce ain't the reason.

The trip down stream is much faster, moving with the current. We reach Canaima lagoon around mid-day. We have a quick lunch and meet up with the group again. We head over to Salto Sapo (Frog Falls), which is through a patch of forest on the far side of Canaima Lagoon.

Salto Sapo


Salto Sapo is a particularly intense section of the Canaima Lagoon falls that is unique in one aspect: the cliff face it tumbles over is carved out in such a way that you can walk behind the falls, from one side to the other. There is a wet rope for you to hold on to. Angel tells us they lost a German there last year. He let go of the rope, the water took him, and he was never seen again. I've walked behind a few waterfalls in my day. No big deal. Or so I think.

Walking underneath Salto Sapo is totally fucking bananas. The water overhead is so massive, and moving so fast, it creates this deafening roar and this insanely chaotic wind and water frenzy. It's like walking in to a blizzard. Naked. You can't hear, as the water is louder than a jet airplane. Your can't see, as your eyes are totally closed, because it feels like someone is spraying a gigantic fire hose right in your face, at point blank range, from all directions. It's soaking wet, you're walking on slippery rocks, and its freezing cold. It is utter mayhem for about thirty seconds. Right around the middle, when the wind and water and noise reaches this ridiculously violent pandemonium, you think about the lost German.
"HOLY SHIT! I could fucking DIE in here!"
The intensity of it all simply makes you want to scream out loud at the top of your lungs, which is exactly what I do. It is unbelievably exhilarating. Unbelievably thrilling. And its just freakin' water! Who knew?

That was worth 5000 computer hours right there. No question.

After climbing to the top side of the falls, we go back underneath again. I could do it twenty times. I tell Anabella if the only two things I had done in Venezuela were eat an Arepito and walk through that waterfall, I could go home happy. It is that fun.

the footpath behind Salto Sapo


Canaima Lagoon at sunset. Pass the rum


After dinner we search all over the town for a place to buy booze that will take credit cards. The whole ATM limit thing is becoming kind of a burden, because Cheo is taking out cash for both of us. Due to our black market shenanigans, he is paying for everything upfront, and I am paying him back at the end of the trip. So now he's like my freakin' Dad, and I'm five, and I need to ask to borrow a dollar every time I want an ice cream. It is annoying, but we are saving money, so whatever.

We finally find a guy who knows a guy who knows the guy that takes credit cards.
"Find the Spaniard! He can help you" says the dude.

"El Español" was an older, Spanish expatriate who runs the general store in Canaima. He is a loud, colorful fellow. He wears a large beaded necklace proudly bearing his name "CLAUDIO GUERRA". It looks more like an olympic medal ribbon. When we walk in, he is congratulating a local fifteen-year-old girl for not "opening her legs for the first German who smiles at her, then being left with a baby like every other high school girl in town" He is saying this quite loudly. The girl seems rather embarrassed.

The good news is: El Español does, in fact, take credit cards, and El Español does, in fact, sell booze. Problem solved. He also sells every kind of woven basket imaginable. Anne gets all excited about buying wicker baskets. She brings a large cluster of them to the counter. Cheo asks El Español what was the best way to carry them on the plane. He violently pounds down on the baskets, in one dramatic smashing motion, BAM!!! - completely flattening them to the thickness of a magazine. To our amazement, they immediately pop back up in perfect shape.
"WHAT HAPPENED?!?!" he yells, in mocking astonishment.
Then he bursts in to raucous laughter. This guy is a piece of work, that's for damn sure.

We spend the evening on the beach by the lagoon, drinking a bottle of local rum and swapping stories. At Anne's insistence, I tell my 8th grade communist story - a classic of mine that I pull out whenever I feel like talking for a really really long time. Cheo tells us the story of how he single-handedly started the Acid Jazz scene in Venezuela, after visiting a Giant Step party in New York City in the early 90s. This was comforting, as I was a big fan of those parties and a regular attendee. There's this weird camaraderie that club heads like myself get when when we discover a person that was at the same club, in the same room, decades ago - grooving to the same music, hitting on the same girls, Etc. You immediately feel like they understand you a bit better than most people, even if this was fifteen years ago. It's like finding out somebody has the exact same favorite novel as you. You immediately like them more. Perhaps this explains why Cheo and I bonded so quickly when we first met.

Cheo also tells us the story of how Los Amigos Invisibles got discovered by David Byrne (singer for the Talking Heads) - a story I will now relate to you, to the best of my recollection (Disclaimer: the bottle of rum was almost empty by this point, so my details may be a bit fuzzy).

Way back when, feeling like they were treading water in Caracas, Los Amigos Invisibles made a pact to save all their money for a whole year, to make one big trip to New York City. Like all rock-n-rollers, they dreamed of making it big.

Finally, after a year of saving every penny, they had enough money to make the trip. The band used every connection they could dig up, and, miraculously, they managed to book four NYC shows in one week. This was their shot. Their one chance. It was all or nothing.

Once in New York, they played their asses off at each and every gig. Lo and behold, the fickle, jaded, brutally-hard-to-please NY crowd actually responded. They were a hit! And on top of that, to their surprise, they met a whole gang of Venezuelan transplants who eagerly attended multiple shows.

One of these Venezuelan transplants just happened to work the counter at Tower Records on Broadway. Cheo, always conscious of a potential connection, made sure not to lose this particular phone number.

When they got back to Caracas, they now had this big buzz of "the band that went to American and got famous". This overnight mythology garnered them a whole new level of respect in their home town. A local sound engineer came forward and offered to record their album for free, hoping to get paid on the back end. They made a record and pressed up a few hundred copies. On the outside chance that someday, someway, this could possibly pay off, Cheo sent ten measly copies to their recently acquired New York friend at Tower Records. This person did, in fact, get those measly ten copies on to the shelves at Tower. Now all that needed to happen was somebody had to buy one of them, discover the band, and decide to make them famous.

As luck would have it, David Byrne waltzed in to Tower one day and just happened to buy one of these measly ten copies. He was impressed. He immediately called the band and told them he wanted to produce their next record. The first time he called and said "this is David Byrne in New York", Cheo thought it was one of his friends playing a prank, and he hung up the phone. Lucky for him, Byrne was persistent, and they were soon signed to his record label. The rest, as they say, is history.

What a great fucking story.