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Venezuela Pt. 2

On our return from Angel Falls, we were struck with the landscape here, we had to do more. Mount Roraima. A 2800m high mountain, or tepui, that inspired the book, “The Lost World”, and is the corner of Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela was not too far away. Lets climb it!

It commenced… with a day wait… I understood the Venezuelan national sport to be baseball, but my experience suggests that strikes is of higher importance… a 4 day mining strike that blocked the only road from Venezuela to Brazil, and our only way to the mountain.
The road opened, and a 9hr ride in a Landcruiser, our driver doing around 90mph (145kph) through villages at 2am…

We finally got within eyesight of the mountain, and began our 5 day trek.

Lunch was BBQ Chicken, local Indian bread and chilli… made from termites. Was delicious.

Off we went…

The Flora on the way was particularly nice.

And our trail up became more and more ¨adventurous¨

And once we made it to the top, the mystical scenery unfolded.

And the amazing Flora kept up…

With incredible landscape

Cool frogs too.

Pity the views were terrible…

On the hike we also met 3 crazy Brazillian guys, circumnavigating the globe… on bicycles. Cool dudes, hope to see them in Aus in the future!

Local police were hard at it.

We went to the import office as we had 3 days to get our motorbikes out of the country… and discovered that extensions for our permit were not feasible, and if we were caught over-staying them, our bikes would be repossessed! We left Bolivar immediately; with around 1500km´s ahead of us… it was good to be back on the bikes after 10 days off them however…

And we headed through my kind of places, farming areas… you don´t need to be too worried about being shot, kidnapped or having your camera stolen when everyone is bum-up in the fields digging potatoes. The reactions too from the people we spoke to changed, instead of the general look of äwe¨ you frequently get when you are explaining your travels, it is replaced by a general look of confusion, as they are perplexed as to how you spend your time on a motorcycle, and make it back home to shear the sheep for summer.

Roads also progressed to be more enjoyable.

We swung through Merida, a really nice town, as we also discovered that we were crossing the border on Sunday, which apparently is when the office that stamps out our bikes was closed. We didn´t like our chances of staying another day and overstaying our limit just to get our bikes stamped out when the possibility of repossession loomed over our heads… so we didn´t stop at the Venezuelan border post, and just left… not sure I will be allowed back soon. Pity, I really liked the place.