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Day 9: The Drive to Succeed

SAN FRANCISCO de MACAIRA,

VENEZUELA

Last night’s rainstorm eased sometime in the early hours, but not before Sid and I discovered a defect with our tent. The soaked canvas at the apex channelled the water down a ribbon from the centre to drip, drip, drip onto us all night. Or at least until my midnight MacGyver job, wrapping the ribbon in toilet tissue and then encasing the whole lot in duct tape.

Never had I been more thankful for my dad’s advice – “Duct tape: never leave home without it!”

There was still a cloying, unexpectedly chilly drizzle in the air this morning as the cook-group prepared breakfast and everyone whined about their first uncomfortable night under canvas.

I guess Sid and I are pretty lucky in that, as a couple, we were automatically allocated to share a tent. Most everyone else has been buddied-up at random into same-sex pairs. These will undoubtedly change over the coming months as friendships or even relationships rise and fall like the reign of Roman emperors.

Nadia, in particular, seemed out of sorts. Quite a solitary individual, I didn’t expect her to enjoy sharing a tent with any other human for a single night, let alone six months! Worse still is her tent-mate: Karen. I would describe the young German woman as plump, outgoing and bubbly. The ‘plump’ isn’t my attempt at fat-shaming like Endgame Thor, but her own words and a self-confessed addiction to bratwursts.

I cannot imagine two people more ill-suited to one another than Nadia and Karen. Based on Nadia’s comments about Karen snoring and farting all night, I sense trouble brewing more than half-digested German sausage. But I may have saved Karen from the number one spot on the Russian’s hit list by suggesting that she most likely also snores and farts in her sleep.

There is a reason people at Oxford called her the Ice Queen, and I now know why.

We packed up our tents after breakfast and, following the barked commands of Professor McKinney, scuttled onto our minibuses like her personal army about to invade Poland.

It’s funny how we humans become creatures of habit so quickly. All 47 of us found pretty much the same seats on the same buses we had occupied yesterday.

After what seemed like an eternity of faffing, our little convoy was off once again. We made our way down through the mountains. Plunging gorges dropped vertically down to our right and pitch-black tunnels, hewn out of the rock, bored through some of the peaks, cutting down our travel time. Eventually, we re-joined Route 12 and continued on the road we should have taken yesterday. 

The rest of the day was spent on the road, stopping only for a quick lunch in a service station car park. The toilets were so foul that most of us opted for the ‘bush toilet’ instead.

The heat grew along with the humidity as we left the mountains behind, and, like a rolling pin ironing out the cookie dough before baking, the landscape flattened out.

Los Llanos (or simply the Plains) is a massive area of exactly what it sounds like – endless miles of flat and featureless, well, plains. It takes up over a quarter of Venezuela’s landmass. As we followed Route 15 south-east across this expanse for hour after hour after hour, we saw little beyond the occasional small town or settlement, randomly placed farmsteads, and copses of trees interspersed throughout farmland. Now and then, our excitement would bubble over at the sight of a genuine Venezuelan cowboy sitting atop his trusty steed and herding his cattle.

As the day waned, we rumbled out of the dry savanna grasslands and into what Juan (who seems to have become our minibus’ unofficial tour guide) called the Llano Bajo. This is where the perpetually arid savannah gives way to seasonal wetlands. This area of the Llano is marginally more interesting, the dusty ground broken by streams and rivers, which I presume are tributaries of the Orinoco. The vegetation is more lush and colourful here.

Even though the sun remained high above the western horizon, our convoy ground to an unexpected halt early in the evening. Ahead was a queue of five or six cars waiting at the base of what looked like a pretty rickety bridge extending out over a wide river beyond.

Del Vega, the head of our Venezuelan military escort, got out of the lead bus and, after several lengthy exchanges with the inhabitants of the other vehicles, reported back to each minibus in turn.

It seems a recent storm washed a section of the bridge away. It is no longer strong enough to take a car’s weight, let alone a minibus full of people and expedition equipment.

Luckily the local authorities have organised a car ferry while repairs on the bridge progress. But it is a very old, slow boat that can only carry two or three vehicles at a time.

With any hope of pushing on to La Paragua gone, we got out of our buses, stretched our legs and worked kinks out of our backs. Route 15 is hardly the M1 – little more than a dusty, potholed track in many places, making one question the use of seemingly suspension-less minibuses for our journey.

We ate yet another meal of not-so-cold-anymore meats, curling salad leaves and dry bread on the side of the road while we waited for the ferry to make several tedious crossings.

It was getting dark by the time all three minibuses made it across the river, the ferryboat ‘captain’ (if that’s the correct terminology?) insisting on taking only one at a time.

We pushed on for nearly an hour before making it to the outskirts of El Tigre, over a day behind schedule and with no hostel or other accommodation booked. Instead, under cover of darkness, we headed off the main road, bounding along even crappier tracks before pulling up into – what soon became apparent – a building site. Novel, to say the least.

We erected our tents around the low walls of partially built houses, keeping quiet so as not to attract any attention (even though there were no other buildings nearby, and we didn’t see a single vehicle pass on the track above us).

 Nevertheless, dusty, dirty, sweaty, aching and exhausted, nobody argued about the idea of getting straight into our tents and falling asleep. 

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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