Venezuela With Mark, Dec. 2004

Th Dec 9        

Mark's flight:
Continental 540; dep AUS 12:51 pm; arr IAH 1:45 pm; Cont. 1928 dep IAH 3:35, arr CCS 10:21 pm     

All flights from the U.S. get you into Caracas airport (Maiquetia) very late, 9-11pm. Caracas is actually quite a ways from the airport, and has an unsavory reputation and lots of scary reports (from the internet chat rooms Mark monitors) of tourists being robbed at knifepoint and so forth. Hotel La Parada, near the airport at Catia La Mar, had several good reports on the chat groups as offering reasonable rates with safe pick-up and return to the airport, so we had tried to make reservations with them by fax, but had no response either by fax or email. Mark finally called them from Houston to check on the reservation, and they were waiting for him at the airport when he got in, although they were full and took him to a different hotel.

[Hotel Turistico “La Parada”; Av. Atlantida, Calle 10 – Quinta Rebeca, Catia La Mar, Edo. Vargas
Tel: (0058-0212) 351.21.48 / 352.38.84 / 614.34.94; Fax: (0058-0212) 352.74.86
Hotel_la_parada@hotmail.com. We paid Bs 70.000 for one night, 2pers 2 beds; Pick up & return from airport was an additional Bs 20.000 (official exchange rate was about 2,000 Bolivares to $1; usual street rate was 2300, best we got was 2400 – at the Avis dealer at the airport)]

Mark took a bus to Maracay the next day and spent a few days at the beach.

T Dec 14        

We discovered that the reservations Mark had made for our 1:30 flight to Merida were actually for the 13^th – which the check-in people hadn’t noticed when he reconfirmed. So, after pre-paying for our return stays and airport transfers at La Parada, and a first cup of Venezuelan café con leche at the hotel, we took an early ride in to the airport to sort out the tickets and maybe try for an earlier flight. We got to the domestic airport about 8:00 and the Santa Barbara airlines girl cheerfully changed out tickets and checked us in for the 8:00 flight. I was rather impressed that she could get us on a flight that had already left, until “all became clear” once we got to the gate. The flight – and others – was substantially delayed. We drank Nescafe and I continued putting little green dots on potential birds in my Venezuelan Birds book for a few hours. Finally the plane came in and a little bus took us out to it.

It was a prop plane, so took about 2 hours to get to Merida. It was enlightening to fly along the coast – the mountains come down very steeply to the sea along most of the coastline, with very few bits of sandy beach, and fewer roads to get to them. Eventually we turned left and inland at about the spread-out metropolis Barquisemeto, and up into the cloud belt through the Andes and into the Merida valley. The town seems to have sprawled into about everywhere it can – hard to see how it could continue to grow.

We picked up our bags (as Mark told me earlier: “ignore the men in camo with rifles; they are here for your protection.”), Mark did some rearranging & reconfirming of tickets. We had the nice young woman at the tourist information booth call Hotel La Montana for us and were able to book a room for the next 2 nights. We took a cab on in to the hotel and settled into our room, which was for 4 people, leaving each of us a convenient spare bed to put our stuff on. We paid a deposit for the key to the room safe – which was rather awkwardly located at the bottom of the closet and behind one of the beds, and was also oddly sensitive so that all in all, it was a significant chore to get things in and out of the safe.

We took our bearings, checked the guide book, and went looking for lunch at “Nota” – Meridqa’s answer to MacDonalds – where we had chicken burgers and our first “batidas” -  a whipped fruit drink.

We went on down the street to Arassari Trek:
[www.arassari.com; Calle 24, No 8-301; arassari@telcel.net.ve; info@arassari.com; cel: 0414-746.35.69; telf +58 (0274)252.58.79]

They are located just next to the famous Teleferico, the cable car system up to the mountain. We ended up pretty much spending the afternoon at Arassari. They have a nice little balcony overlooking the valley and the Teleferico line, and provide free internet access to their clients. We met Angel, the office guy, confirmed our reservation for the Llanos trip for the 19^th, and checked into possibilities for the Catatumbo trip.

It turned out that Camilo Alcale (“Camilo Tranquilo” on the list of guides’ nicknames) would be able to take us on the “intensive” one-day version of the Catatumbo trip the next day, and had another interested person who had been waiting for that trip. So, while we sipped blackberry batidas, he contacted that fellow, Andrew, who came on down. We all agreed to pay $70 each for the trip (usually $60 but with a minimum of 4 people to make the trip a “go” – or $90 for the 2-day version). We had one more batida, and headed back to the room.

Mark found a laundry listed in the guide book, and we walked around the streets awhile. The town is nicely laid out on a grid of streets and avenues, so pretty easy to find things. We eventually found the “Ecology” laundry, left off the laundry bag, and went back by way of the main street – Bolivar Avenue, naturally, which leads to Bolivar Square, with a nice equestrian statue of El Libertador.

Back at the hotel, we had a pasta dinner, packed for the Catatumbo trip and went to bed.

Stop #2 was this coffee plantation (Los Canales).

Mark attempted to purchase coffee beans, as Venezuela supposedly has very good coffee but doesn’t export it much - but the lady of the farm only had it for sale in 50-pound bags, unroasted. He decided to pass.

The owners had an extensive aviary with pet chachalacas, parrots, macaws, etc, and also one of the few bird feeders I saw in Venezuela, which quite effectively brought in a variety of pretty tanagers.

These are, left to right: Blue-necked
Tanager, Thick-billed Euphonia, & Crimson-backed Tanager (with the startlingly silver-white beak).

Other wild birds at the plantation we saw were the Blue-gray Tanager and Southern Grayish Saltator.

We waited out the main heat of the day having a lunch of roasted chicken and manioc at a restaurant in Zea (or was it Vega…?).

After lunch, we drove on and arrived at a little fishing village adjacent to Cienegas de Catatumbo National Park about 4 pm. We boarded a motorboat there for a long ride along the lush edge of the park, and eventually out across a section of Lake Maracaibo, with plenty of wildlife all along the route.

Green Iguana

This Black-Collared Hawk posed quite nicely for us for quite a while – didn’t seem quite able to decide whether we were enough of an annoyance to give up a perfectly good fishing perch for…

Russet-throated Puffbird:

Red Howler Monkey, with toddler on back.

We headed out into the lake to another area to look for the elusive Northern Screamer, which successfully eluded us – though we did hear it scream. We saw Gray River Dolphins on the way, along with lots more birds, many standing on the pilings near the stilt-houses.

TH Dec. 16

We slept in after the long ride yesterday, and after breakfast at the hotel we set off to retrieve Mark’s laundry at the Ecology laundry. We stopped in at a religious articles store to purchase a Santa Barbara. However, we believe we failed to properly activate her, because she certainly was no use in defending us from a local purse-snatching operation. We stopped to take a picture of the church at Belen (Bethlehem) Plaza and as soon as Mark put his camera into his Hogue wine bag, a little brown hand reached between us and snatched the bag, and 2 little boys went racing around the corner. Mark pursued, shouting “Thief!” but got no real assistance from the standers-by. An athletic young man in a red t-shirt with “Alaska” written across the front – I had noticed him going by us a few minutes before – gave chase. Or, so we thought, but Mark saw him get into a vehicle along with the boys, so he must have been the main operator. There was a prompt, though not very useful, response from the police. A couple of plainclothes “tourist police” appeared very quickly, but unfortunately we didn’t have the vehicle number or a good description of the kids, so there wasn’t much they could do. They turned us over to a couple of uniformed cops on bicycles who took us down the street to the police station to make a report. They, in turn, recommended that we go to the main station to file a report, but we decided to think about it – there wasn’t much chance of retrieving the camera with all of Mark’s pictures, so probably not worth spending much more time on.

We went on, picked up Mark’s laundry and handed over mine. Mark got a haircut.

I had picked up a cold – started with a sore throat as we were winding up the Catatumbo trip the night before. So we began an acquaintance with the shopkeeper at the corner “Farmacia” to which we would keep returning for an increasing arsenal of cough syrup and cold medications over the next few days.

In the afternoon we went back to Arassari to check email – and a good thing, too, because we met Roger Manrique there, who is the guide all the books recommend as particularly knowledgeable about the birds. Roger was clearly pleased at the prospect of having a birder on his trip, and decided then and there that, yes, he would take the upcoming Llanos tour, which he had been hedging on, and began scheming ways to get the most birding out of the standard  itinerary. He recommended taking the Teleferico the next day – it would get very crowded on the weekend, and possibly going for a hike in the nearby Sierra Nevada NP to do some birding, for which Angel at Arassari would be able to arrange a driver. Roger would continue to prove a gold mine of information and enthusiasm.

We picked up a take-out pizza for dinner, by which time I was beginning to notice my oncoming cold.

Fr. Dec 17

We got up early to take the Teleferico up the mountain and try to beat the clouds to the top.

We learned to zip to the back seats to get a good window while others jostled for the front.

The Teleferico runs in 4 separate stages (the last, to the mountaintop, apparently hasn’t been operational in years). Once you get on at the bottom you can get on and off at will.

Take-off: Arassari’s building and deck are on the right. 

Merida from the Teleferico, stage 1.

First stop, in the cloud forest - restaurant on the right

Stage 2 of the Teleferico, over the cloud forest:

Leg 3 of the Teleferico, over the Paramo zone, above timberline:

Tyrian Metaltail

Black-capped Tyrannulet (?)

Cecropia trees from the top .

Bromeliad

I pretty much spent the rest of the evening and Saturday lying around sucking cough drops and cough syrup and trying to get some sleep.

Saturday evening, we gathered with the other passengers for the Llanos trip for a briefing for the trip.