Morrocoy, Caracas & Cuidad Bolívar
Last weekend I went an area called Morrocoy, a national park, which has a bunch of pretty little islands, called cayos in Spanish. I stayed in a town called Chichiriviche (pronounced: chi-chi-ree-vee-che), in the state of Falcón. Say Chichiriviche a few times fast. It’s fun. Chichiriviche, Chichiriviche, Chichiriviche. See.
To get there I had to take a 2.5 hour and very uncomfortable bus ride west to Valencia, in Estado Carabobo (Carabobo is fun to say too), and then transfer a to bus that goes to Chichiriviche (about 2 more hours). I got in to Valencia too late and missed the last bus to Chichiriviche so I found some others that were going to Chichiriviche and we negotiated a cab ride. I did it all in Spanish too. 
The trip back on Sunday was smoother.
A little about buses in this country: inter-city buses in Venezuela have a sound system that would be the envy of most American teenagers. Mounted over the driver’s head are a large set of speakers. Both to and from Chichiriviche the drivers had the music blasting: reggaeton, salsa, you name it. At points the passengers were even singing along. Also, they are also designed for Venezuelans, which are of course much smaller then a 6′6″ gringo like me.
Chichiriviche is a not-so-nice little beach town that provides access to the cayos. On Saturday I went out to Cayo Sal. The pictures are up on Flickr. The weather was nice, but not great. It was very windy, which kept a lot of bugs away, but I still got some bites though. The south side of Cayo Sal is where the best beach is, but it was very noisy and crowded so I decided to explore and walk around the island. On the north side was a very nice, secluded cresent-shaped beach, which would have been beautiful, but it seems that all the drift wood and garbage from the Caribbean Sea washed up on it. It was a bit sad. Then around the east side the shoreline was very rocky and equally as dirty as the north. The wind was from the east that day and some surfers catching some waves. See in the pictures.
I made it only three-quarters of the way around the island before it became impassable because of bushes that were growing all the way out into the water. It was also rocky and the waves were too rough otherwise I would have walked though the water as I had done in other calmer spots.
Once I got back to the main beach on the south side I was relaxing in the shade of a palm tree when an old man, with a tough accent to understand, asked me the time. He could obviously tell by my outrageous accent that I was not Venezuelan. He asked me where I was from and I told him. After that he talked for a bit about how I liked Venezuela, how long was I staying, where was I going, etc. There were a lot of no entiendos on my part because my Spanish still needs help and his accent was tough for me.
Once he went back to his family, and told them about the gringo he had been talking with, they got curious and came over to talk to me too. They asked me a lot of the same questions the old man did and then a bunch more about the U.S.: what’s it like, how much do things cost. And of course the obligitory, “what do you think of Bush?” “what do you think of Chávez?” questions. I have no problem speaking about Bush and I’ve gotten quite good about dancing around the Chávez question. You never know who’s a Chavista. After a while they offered me a sandwich and some soda. They were very nice. In general, Venezuelans are extremely nice. I think they were from a city called Barquisimeto (also fun to say, see a pattern), but I don’t remember.
This week in Caracas has been pretty tame, we picked up a Brazilian, named Anderson (huh?), in my Spanish class. He’s a firefighter from Sao Paulo and a very nice guy.
Tomorrow (Friday 2/3) I am going to try to catch an overnight bus from Caracas to Cuidad Bolívar, the capital of Estado Bolívar oddly enough. From there I will try to hook up with some other backpackers and head out to Canaima and Roraima. I hope to have some great pictures when I return.
My pictures can be found on Flickr.com at http://www.flickr.com/photos/toddsiegel/.
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