Venezuela, travel to an emotional destination: from Canaima to Los Roques

Venezuela is an emotional destination but you have to live the challenge. You don't come here to relax. Everything is worth it, even the realization of the obvious: that everything is too expensive for many Venezuelans, that there is hardly any international tourism and that any attempt to do something alone—the photographer tried several times—is settled with a polite: “I we accompany.”

We flew from Madrid to Caracas, capital of Venezuela, to leave the next day for the star destination of this trip: the National park Canaima. A mysterious and spiritual site, especially for Venezuelans who since they were children have studied the geography of this place in school, a UNESCO world heritage site since 1994. They know that it extends 30,000 kilometers to the border with Brazil and Guyana, that there are tepuis, geological formations that hide, according to some scientists, the origin of life. A good Venezuelan will passionately defend all these theories, but it is more than likely that he does not know how to get to Canaima, or that he has never walked under Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world: 1,283 meters, masterfully recreated in the film Up by Pixar (2009).

To get to Canaima, 409 kilometers from Caracas, you have to fly one hour from the Maiquetía airport with the state airline Conviasa. Until a little over a year ago, the runway at the Canaima airport was very short and medium-sized planes could not land, now its lengthening is allowing the arrival of more tourists. Landing here, especially if you are traveling with a Venezuelan, is to enter into an infinite whirlwind of gratitude to the universe or to whoever has the luck of being in a place that gives off such magnetic energy. In the park you sleep in camps. The chosen one on this occasion is the Canaima Camp, the largest hotel in the territory, five minutes by van from the tiny airport. He is 88 suites perfectly equipped and several private villas. In any case, there is little in the rooms. The arrival at lobby With the scenery of the tepuis and the El Hacha and Wadaima waterfalls, it will remain in memory as one of the great moments of the trip, the perfect promise of what we are going to experience.

That same afternoon we make the first excursion to El Hacha waterfall. The guide, Carlos, is 27 years old and is a Pemón from the Kamarakoto ethnic group, originally from the area (100% of the employees at Camp Canaima belong to that community, settled very close to the accommodation). The excursion lasts two hours, it begins by sailing in a curiara (boat used by the local population to go up the rivers and the thickness of the jungle) until disembarking next to El Hacha. The force of nature is the only presence and the noise of the water is thunderous, although according to the locals this is a jump for beginners. You will still have to walk a little further to cross the overwhelming curtain of water of the waterfall. “Shoes off,” suggests the guide, who jumps from stone to stone barefoot. Carlos urges you to walk with socks on the wet rock. Much safer and more stable, he says. It will be one of the great learnings of the adventure: “Any sole on wet rock will be much more slippery than a wet sock,” tells us the guide who studies English on the Duolingo application to prepare for the imminent arrival of Anglo-Saxon and American tourists. The second subliminal message is evident: this is the time and no other to come to Canaima.

Five days are enough to understand that the El Hacha jump was, indeed, the appetizer. From Camp Canaima we will fly by small plane over the Kurun and Kusari tepuis, we will go to the Kavak caves and bathe in its multiple waterfalls and pools of cold water. We will also eat grilled chicken with the locals of the village and we will almost touch the Angel Falls with our hands. When we return, exhausted, they always wait for us at the camp with a very cold glass of papelón with lemon (a traditional soft drink) and some meat empanadas. The Campamento Canaima restaurant serves a closed menu of delicious Creole food. For breakfast there are arepas, shredded meat, fresh cheese and fruits, good coffee and natural juices to get energy. The food varies between a Mexican menu, a grill or a black roast, accompanied by banana cake, rice or lentils. Dinner is usually chicken, meat or fish accompanied by pasta, rice and vegetables that are bought from the conucos of the Pemone communities.

The helicopter flight to Angel Falls is out of this world. The device gains altitude while the pilot alternates Venezuelan salsa from the seventies with the exalted song Venezuela by Luis Silva, which is heard with unusual frequency during the trip. The captain clings dangerously to the rock walls (or so it seems to us) so that we can closely admire this prodigy of nature, whose height was measured for the first time in 1949 thanks to an investigation by journalist Ruth Robertson for the National Geographic Society. The helicopter flies over Devil's Canyon and the Churun ​​River at full speed, and passes low over the bright ocher surface of a tepui. The feeling is clear: you will never live a similar experience again. Our veteran captain has taught the hidden secrets of Canaima to Steven Spielberg and several producers of video games and legendary television series. He is the best, he knows it and he makes it known.

From the jungle to the Caribbean

The next stop is Isla Margarita, but first we spend the night in a Caracas that surprises with a magnificent Japanese restaurant, Otokam by Makoto.
The next morning it's time to get up early to go to Margarita, a well-known destination in Europe that will once again have a direct charter flight from Madrid in 2024. The Caribbean island is still coming out of the pandemic stoppage in fits and starts. Its people are waiting like May rain for confirmation of this direct flight from Europe. We slept at the San Patricio hotel, a few meters from Playa El Agua. Margarita continues to be a destination with crystal clear waters, white sands and palm trees. For breakfast or lunch there is a must-visit place: Los Hermanos Moya, an arepera that is an institution on the island and also on Instagram (the small place has 50,000 followers).

In addition to sun and beach, Margarita offers excursions to its historic center, lots of nightlife and an excellent gastronomic offer. Amaranto is recommended, a neotropical restaurant halfway between a concept store and a very well curated bookstore. The great attraction of Margarita is the direct connection with Canaima and the miracle of mixing a Caribbean plan with an adventure in the Amazon jungle.

The last stop on the trip is Los Roques, an almost virgin archipelago, an aspirational place par excellence where people get married and spend the summer. beautiful people from Venezuela, become an object of global desire after the Puerto Rican rapper Jhayco told in his song Holland that he took his girl “to Los Roque” and that Arcángel and Quevedo chose Los Roques as the setting (and title) of a song.

Los Roques, just 176 kilometers from Caracas, is the largest coral reef in the southern Caribbean. The show begins from the air, with aerial views of the islands and sandbanks that make up the atoll, a structure more typical of the Pacific than the Caribbean. Once on land you have to go through strict passport control because entry is very restricted. Here you sleep in inns, family hotels run by locals, where you have the best mango juice in the world for breakfast. We stay in Sabbia, an inn with eight air-conditioned rooms and private bathrooms. Gran Roque, the largest island, has two streets: the first beach line occupied by the inns and the second, by the houses of the Roqueños, the school and the small hospital.

To the rest of the islands, some with unique names such as Madrisquí, Mosquitoquí or Cayo Nordisquí (the suffix “quí” corresponds to the phonetic sound of the English term key, key, and is assigned to the inhabitants who arrived from the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba and Curacao in the 19th century), it is reached by sea, transfers that are usually included in the services of the inns. They also offer to deliver food to any of the tiny islands. Eating a fresh lobster in front of the calm Caribbean sea is an experience worth paying once in a lifetime. Los Roques is the dream paradise of divers. In its seabed, protected since 1972, live 280 species of fish, 200 species of crustaceans, 61 types of coral and 45 species of sea urchins and starfish.

Leaving Los Roques by small plane to the Maequetía airport and quickly taking the flight back to Madrid is the definitive proof that all good things come to an end, but no one said that traveling meant staying in places forever, but rather accumulating desire and strength to return.

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