Not much to say about today. And, you know what? I’m not going to bother trying. Sure, I could force some long-winded blog post about Carimara’s origin as a gold rush town or discuss the impact of gold mining on the region. But the last few days have been so full-on that I just need a bit of chill-out time. So, I’ll keep this short.
Yes, I hear your sigh of relief after my rather behemoth posts of late.
CARIMARA,
VENEZUELA
After a great night’s sleep – and, no, I’m not being sarcastic this time – Sid and I had breakfast. Rather than the oaty gruel of the last few days, we were delighted by cereal and UHT milk (ah, the luxuries of returning to civilisation – and, no, I’m still not being sarcastic). Then we had a leisurely morning at the camp, waiting our turn to use the showers in the town’s motel.
Initially, I had been jealous of the few, like McKinney and Co (what a surprise – and yes, sarcasm has returned), who were ‘allocated’ a room at the motel rather than tenting it like the rest of us. But, after seeing the state of one of the rooms and, worse, the bed, I think I’ll stick with the tent. The shower was . . . wet. That’s probably the only nice thing I can think of to say about the grungy, dirty cubicle in a grungy, dirty bathroom in a grungy, dirty motel room. And, even then, the water pressure was so abysmal that even describing it as wet is generous.
Later in the morning, McKinney gathered the whole team back at the campsite, minus the annoying interns. It turned out that they had decided to wander off into town and, consequently, turn the professor’s face an angry shade of red.
She explained the situation on Sarisariñama and the next steps of the operation, which were pretty much what we all knew anyway.
The mighty, heroic and in-every-way-imaginable incredible Mister Raine has spent the last few days ferrying equipment and supplies from an airfield on the outskirts of town to Sarisariñama basecamp. He’s also shipped a support team, mainly from the local area, who will work as cooks, maintenance workers, cleaners and any other duties commensurate to the post, as I’m sure the job description says. They’ve set up the base’s lab and mess tents and erected a platform to set up our ‘residential’ tents on arrival. The scientific equipment is still in crates, and our first job will be to set it up when we get there.
As for getting there, McKinney has divided us into four smaller groups, and Raine will fly one group to the mountain each day for the next four days. McKinney, the film crew, del Vega, and most of his men are shipping out this afternoon. Sid, Nadia and I are all in the last contingent, so I guess we’ll be getting to know Carimara pretty well over the next few days.
I can’t prove it, of course, but I feel like our allocation to the final group is a snub of me and, by default, Sid and Nadia. McKinney has made a point of having as little to do with me as possible. I know she was a particularly outspoken critic of my work on the Progenitor Theory, the Black Death and the Moon Mask. In one academic review, she even described it as something like ‘pure fantasy’. Marc [Duval], one of my old uni professors and my dad’s best friend (as well as the person responsible for pulling some not inconsequential strings to get me on this expedition), warned me about her. She had done everything in her power to block my assignment to the dig, but, it seems, Marc’s reach goes further than McKinney’s, twisting someone at the UN’s arm to force her into a corner.
While she couldn’t stop me from joining, as I feared, she’s not going to be doing me any favours. I can live with that, but if their association with me hinders Sid and Nadia’s experience here, I’ll need to address it.
After the briefing, Sid and I headed into the town, searching for the so-called Supermarket. It’s no Asda, but we did grab some crisps, oddly chalky chocolate, bread rolls and cheese for lunch, washed down with chocolate milk (because, why the hell not?).
Carimara isn’t quite the cesspit I thought it was when we arrived yesterday. But it’s not far off. It is little more than one long road bordered on either side by ramshackle buildings. Less than a thousand downtrodden people populate it. They are a mixture of Spanish descendants, Mestizos and the handful of Ye’kuana who have chosen to relocate here from their traditional villages. They claim to be searching for ‘western civilisation’. . . not sure they’ve found it though. Except for fishing in the Carimara river, the town’s lifeblood seems to be the airstrip. Along with oil prospectors and goldmine surveyors, this allows the more adventurous tourists access to the heart of Venezuela’s southern rainforests.
There are, therefore, an odd number of dodgy-looking tour operators working out of a long line of identically rough shop fronts. Each seems to offer equally identical tours to equally identical places for equally identical prices. They even use equally identical photos on equally identical faded laminated boards to advertise said trips.
Someone really should explain the value of healthy competition and the power of diversifying one’s offer. The only thing setting these operators apart from each other was which equally disinterested-looking tout tried the hardest to sell us a tour.
With a couple of days to kill here, Sid and I investigated our options, choosing the aptly named Tepuis Tours purely at random. They, like everyone else, offered a variety of river cruises, jungle safaris, trekking, light aircraft sightseeing flights over a couple of different tepuis, and even a Duck tour to ‘Devil Blood Falls.’ Having had quite enough river cruises to last a lifetime, and knowing we are about to spend months living on a tepui, we signed up for a trip tomorrow to the
Cueva Azul (the Blue Cave).
We spent the rest of the afternoon by the tent, battling mozzies. We waved goodbye to Tom, Miguel, John McClane (never did learn his real name) and the rest of the team from the Rio de Sangre Ecolodge. They are returning home minus one canoe.
As I watched them fade into the sunset like some cliched ending to an old western movie, I sensed that the first part of our journey was truly over.
We may have a few days to kill in Carimara, but all thought now turns to the tabletop mountain that sits as a faint outline on the distant horizon.
I wonder what surprises Sarisariñama has in store for us.
