Are you looking for a trip of a lifetime? Take a trip to Venezuela
AS THE BUS slowly pulled away from Cork and I lost sight of my family, I realised that two months was going to be a long time.
Forty eight hours later, three flights, hours of broken sleep and an unexpected 12-hour overnight stay in Caracas airport, one of the most dangerous airports in the world, we arrived in Merida.
I should have paid more attention to my surroundings in the car on the way to our guest house but I just let everything that happened sink in.
In such a short time I had gone from travelling no further than Kerry without a relative, to being in Venezuela, a country renowned for kidnapping and murders. Luckily I was staying in a safe part of the country but all the same I had to try my hardest to keep a brave face on.
If I had been asked a year beforehand about what I would be doing during my transition year I would have spoken about the four-day trip to Amsterdam and the overnight trip to Tramore but I would never have thought about spending two months with two 16-year-old girls in South America.
This trip had been organised by an amazing team at a company called Jakera. They teach Spanish through adventure tours and that is exactly what they did for us.
Looking back now, I realise all the work they put into keeping us safe and make us feel at home during our stay.
Over the next six weeks I shared a room at the front of a guest house with the two girls who came with me and who are now my best friends, Zoe and Julia.
It was amazing having them with me on this journey, I would have been lost without them. Even though we drove each other crazy a lot of the time, it was nice to hear an Irish accent when we felt homesick.
We started lessons with our extremely clever Spanish teacher Daniela who became like an older sister to us and we also began our volunteering placements.
Being completely honest we weren’t overly excited about doing volunteer work every day and were much happier looking for wi-fi but after a short period of time we began to enjoy the variety of it; we worked in a zoo, a hospital, a vets and a children’s foundation.
With the help of Kira, the daughter of one of the partners that owned Jakera, we learned how to negotiate the busy streets of Merida and where to get the best pizza, which we ate at least once a week.
We were thrown into the adventure activities straight away. The first weekend we went rock climbing, really popular in Venezuela.
This was not so popular with me. At the time I was terrified of heights. Later the same day I was forced to totally overcome my fear as my arm was twisted into doing a pendulum jump from a 60 metre bridge.
If you’re wondering what sort of fun activity a pendulum jump is, it’s just like a bungee jump off a bridge but instead of bouncing you swing back and forth.
It was, and still is, the most terrifying and exhilarating thing I have ever done but I am so glad I did it. It really helped me overcome my fear.
The following weekend we went canyoning. I had no idea what it was so I did not know what to expect. As it turns out it is abseiling down waterfalls and wading through rivers.
Zoe was still recovering from the pendulum jump, so Julia and I took a jeep up a very high mountain to begin this adventure. We spent hours getting back down and were exhausted but it was well worth it, just to say we successfully descended a waterfall.
With all of us having a new lease of life and a recently acquired taste for adventure we decided to go paragliding. We were collected outside the B&B by a very nice man in a Toyota Jeep (everybody who had any business going anywhere near the steep mountains had the same powerful machine). We were all equally nervous, especially when we got instructions to “run as fast as you can off the mountain or you will fall and die”.
However the instructors that were strapped to us were very kind and did reassure us it would all be alright. Once in the air I felt weightless, like a bird able to see for miles. It’s strange the sort of stuff you think about whilst floating around in mid-air over a beautiful city. We gradually floated back down towards the base and landed safely.
The next trips we did were with a guide called Edgar. He became a best friend to us during these trips. We were in total awe of him. He was such a positive influence.
The first trip we did with Edgar was to Catatumbo. Famous for the lightning shows it puts on every night it is a truly extraordinary place.
We stayed in a ‘Palafito’ which is a house on stilts in a lake; it had no walls only a wire, so we had a 360 degree view of the lake from the hammocks we slept in.
I would seriously recommend a Palafito to anybody who needs to get away from the hustle and bustle of life as the isolated cabin has a pontoon you can sit on, an ideal place to relax.
The only problem for us was that it was the hottest part of Venezuela and we had come from Ireland so we were boiling hot during the day!
That night we went on a water safari and found caiman, a crocodilian reptile, which Edgar caught so we could get close up to them. Next day we left the Palafito and moved in to San Jose where we stayed in the sweetest little houses.
Zoe, Julia and I were sharing one. We were surprised to find an army of ants. In one of our brilliant moments we decided to spray them with mosquito repellent and after about a second and a half ants began to pour out from the walls.
We ran outside screaming and all ended up sleeping in different houses. The following day we went horse riding through the mountains and sunbathed.
On the way home in the car that evening we all sang along to Edgar’s music on the the five hour journey.
Our next trip was to Los Llanos – a huge grassland. We drove for 13 hours to get to a farm where we were staying for two nights.
With frogs in the toilets, toads by our feet and the threat of scorpions in our hammocks we didn’t think we would enjoy this trip. The next day we did another water safari and it was amazing to see the biodiversity in Venezuela.
That evening we went piranha fishing which was so much fun. All of us caught some which we ate for dinner. After dinner we went out looking for an anaconda.
Zoe, Julia and I sat on the roof of the jeep and the local guides looked in the long grasses for the giant snakes. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any so we returned to the farm for a quiet night.
Our next stop was at a luxury rafting camp, with an indoor shower and actual beds instead of hammocks; it was like a paradise with a tribal theme to it was so different to where we had been staying previously. The following morning we went white water rafting which was my favourite part of the trip.
The people in the other boats were so funny and really made us feel like part of their group, even though we only understood half of what they said. That night we returned home exhausted and very sunburnt.
For the final two weeks our parents joined us in Jakera’s second office by the beach in Playa Colarada. It was so different to Merida, it was quiet and very sunny and we spent most of our time in the crystal clear water.
On the last part of our adventure we kayaked up the Orinoco Delta. I shared a kayak with my dad, as did Zoe, while Julia shared one with her mother. It really was an experience to say the least.
We thought living in a room with each other was bad but being in a kayak with one of your parents for hours was even less pleasant.
We eventually made our way to a hut where a family of Pemu Indians lived. Constructed in the actual river bed, their hut home was very basic. We all decided to go for a swim in the Delta, truthfully it was quite scary, as we knew there were Caimen and Anacondas but we luckily we didn’t meet any of them.
We were all so tired we slept from seven in the evening until five the next morning. We then left the family and moved onto an eco-village on the river. It had beds, toilets, showers and tables and chairs. It’s hard to understand how it feels to get excited because you have a proper toilet.
That evening we put on our wellies and went for a jungle walk. It was crazy how we had all gone from being scared of ants, to willingly walking into the jungle.
We went with a guide from the camp who was a great help because it was so easy to get lost in there. Also it was very easy to step on what you thought was solid ground and end up waist high in muddy jungle water.
The next day we made a move again, this time in the car with our guide Harrison and driver Salvador. It was Angel Falls time; we stopped overnight at a lodge which was even more luxurious than the last because it had hot water for the shower and a swimming pool.
The next morning we drove and then took a tiny plane to Angel Falls.
We went straight up the river to the base camp at the bottom of the Falls, Early the next morning we hiked up to a viewing point of the falls - with a drop of 979 metres it is the world’s tallest waterfall and the most breath-taking thing I have ever seen.
The same evening we returned to our glamorous lodge where we celebrated the end of the trip.
That night our parents went out but we stayed at the lodge (had wifi we hadn’t used in two weeks) and reminisced on the whole eight weeks.
Leaving Venezuela was heart-breaking for all of us. The trip changed us in so many ways and really opened our eyes to the different cultures of the world. It was the trip of a lifetime and I would recommend it to anybody who is open to adventure.
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