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Day 8 Extra: Off to Market

 

SAN FRANCISCO de MACAIRA,

VENEZUELA

21:00

Fun fact: Juan wasn’t joking. That really was a good traffic day in Caracas.

It was almost 2 pm when our little convoy managed to escape the seething morass of traffic pollution in Caracas – and I can’t say I’ll miss the place. But, the city did give us a parting gift – a complete and utter screw-up to our travel plans.

So, the plan was this –

A day’s drive from Caracas, stopping overnight in a hostel in El Tigre. Tomorrow morning we’d make another 6 hours or so push south to La Paragua before taking a boat down the Rio Paragua to overnight in a jungle lodge. From there, it’s a couple of days downriver to a place called Carimara, where a helicopter will ship us to Sarisariñama.

I’m sure it would have been easier to fly us straight to the mountain, but this wasn’t logistically possible. Sarisariñama is over a day’s helicopter flight. Even then, the helicopter would have to stop over at Carimara to refuel. That’s what that American, Raine, will be doing for the duration of the expedition. He’ll be flying supplies to and from Caracas via Carimara, which at least means I’m not gonna have to put up with him being around all the time.

Whatever the reason, a combo of road and river travel was deemed the best way of transporting so many people at once.

Though, whoever came up with that idea hadn’t factored the traffic of Caracas into their equation.

Instead of 500 km, we’ve made it 170 km. Instead of a hostel bed, we’re camping. Instead of looking forward to a gruelling 6-hour journey tomorrow, we’re looking at 10 hours on the road, followed by an hour in a boat.

Wonderful.

Yet every cloud has a silver lining, as they say. And the cloud of Caracas does too.

Finally escaping the urban grip, our minibus took us east, away from the city, following Route 9 as it wound through the mountains.

We stopped for a very late lunch on the side of the road, cracking open the bags of salad, cheese and meats that the hotel had packed into chiller boxes. Then we continued for another two hours, joining Route 12 and heading south.

The road climbed over spectacular passes. Forested peaks gave way to incredible views of breath-taking valleys, rivers and lakes before, unexpectedly, the Iead minibus pulled off the main road. Our driver followed, as did the third bus behind us. We soon found ourselves bumping along narrow tracks which concertinaed through the mountains in a series of hairpin bends.

At one point, our convoy came across a brightly painted American-style school bus, repurposed into standard Venezuelan public transport. Our drivers pulled hard into the lefthand cliff face, the vehicles’ metal flanks screeching against stone.

The alternative was to hang over a vertiginous drop as the old school bus did. Crucifixes lining the road were a stark reminder that one wrong move by the sweating driver of the oncoming vehicle could end in disaster.

It took nearly twenty nail-biting minutes for the large bus to inch past our convoy, and when we saw it finally pass the minibus behind ours, we all let out a cheer.

“Normal traffic day in Venezuela,” Juan repeated his earlier comment.

This time I knew he wasn’t joking.

Eventually, our convoy of minibuses rumbled into a small town in the mountains called San Francisco de Macaira. We pulled inside a large compound, gates held open by a very bored-looking older gentleman, suckling desperately at a cigarette.

The air was cooler here as we disembarked our ride and huddled around our illustrious leader as ordered. More to the Adventure Channel camera than to her team, McKinney explained that the delay forced her to rework our itinerary en route. This campsite was the best option for an overnight stop, a good three or four hours short of our intended destination at a hostel in La Tigre.

Because of the delay, however, we will be pushing on for longer tomorrow, seeing how much distance we can cover and probably end up finding somewhere to wild camp.

Well, that’s that, I guess.

We unloaded our tents, bags and equipment and set up camp. Smokey Joe, the campsite owner/attendant/gatekeeper/who-knows-what, loitered near us, a halo of blue cigarette smoke swirling around his head like some fallen angel. He spoke to some of us. Though, judging from the blank expressions on my companions’ faces, I wasn’t the only one struggling to understand.

He had only two visible teeth, and his voice was hoarse, unsurprisingly accompanied by a racking cough. This made only a handful of Spanish words audible. Juan (who I’m beginning to quite like for his affable manner, in contrast to his other soldier mates) explained that the man is Zulian. Zulians are descendants of an indigenous Venezuelan population from the north-western state of Zulia (and I now know the origin of the beer’s name too!). They speak Zulian Spanish, a related but distinct dialect.

He was trying to tell us that the local market was still on in the town below. So, as we still had a couple of hours before a cook group, designated by McKinney, was due to serve our evening meal, a group of us headed down the hill to investigate.

It was only a ten-minute walk to a field on the outskirts where goats, donkeys and cows competed over the bellowed bidding of the townsfolk. People walked around with pigs on leashes and roosters on ropes. Chickens were piled into tiny cages, and dogs bounced around in toddler playpens. The vendors practised their sales techniques on the unexpected group of multicultural strangers in their midst, trying to shift their tubs of frozen yoghurt before they melted.

Our group broke into several smaller groups which went separate ways. Sid and I stayed with Nadia and her newly assigned tent-mate, Karen (the German girl I’d been chatting to the other night). We spent some time watching these comings and goings with fascination before heading into the craft market.

To call it just a market is perhaps an injustice. It seems to be more of a way of life for this mountain community.

The market spilt over from the main street and filled every alleyway and road in a startling array of bright colours. There were scarves and shawls, hats, dream catchers and wind chimes, exquisite jewellery, finely crafted masks and intricately carved statues. Further into town, the crafts gave way to foodstuffs. Stall after stall was laden with fruit while skinned goats hung in the sunshine. Strange-looking sweets, pastries, pies and bread dried out alongside packets of cigarettes and old western Porn magazines. There were even jars filled with some sort of animal foetus suspended in liquid. Juan later explained that some of the traditional communities living in the mountains believe in the healing properties of monkey foetuses, so I guess that’s what we were looking at!

Despite the temptation, none of us was in a position to turn this into a souvenir shopping trip. And I think I’ll stick to the antibiotics in my first aid kit rather than monkey foetus for now. So, after a while, we headed back to the campsite.

A few large raindrops fell as we waited for the cook group to finish. The shower quickly became a torrential downpour, lashing from the sky in pounding sheets and turning the campsite lawn into a quagmire.

The entire group gathered under the shelter of the site’s covered kitchen area and watched the driving rain soak our tents. We ate a meal of mango chicken and rice, washed down with a Zulia. We all laughed when the occupant of one tent, Richard, discovered that his newly assigned tent buddy (another, though more dappy Richard) had left the cover off the insect net set into the apex of all the expedition tents, soaking their belongings.

Not the best way to endear oneself to your new tent mate but at least ‘the pair of Dicks,’ as someone light-heartedly put it, saw the funny side.

Exhausted from the day’s misadventures, it wasn’t long before we all ran to our tents to get some sleep.

Day one of the Sarisariñama Expedition may not have gone to plan. But things can only get better from here.

Right?

Benjamin King

My name is Dr Benjamin King, and I am an archaeologist working on the UNESCO Sarisariñama Expedition. Join me on my epic journey to one of the most remote places on the planet – a tabletop mountain towering above the Venezuelan rainforest. This will be my home for six months as my colleagues and I attempt to unravel the mystery of the ancient ruins that lie buried within an enormous sinkhole. Not only do I blog updates about the project, but also the trials and tribulations of life in the jungle. Something tells me that the danger of the jungle’s predators is nothing compared to the perils of being trapped with the same group of people for the next six months! Don’t miss out on a single moment of this extraordinary adventure - follow me on social media @benking1209 Benjamin King is also the fictional hero of the action-packed adventure series ‘The Xibalba Saga’ by James Richardson. Read it now https://amzn.to/3dD9wZW Stay up to date on new releases and exclusive free content at www.moonmask.net and @worldofmoonmask

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