Last hotel in Brazil. Fabulous retro bathroom and a green teddy bear bin!
We stopped for lunch on the Equator (or so Pete tells me).
Parrot marks the spot
Francois did this......
....before he realised he was right at the top of this...
Another stop en route....a quick dip...Vanessa waving
Pete wanted to get us into Venezuela on Thursday as the Venezuelan President, Chavez, just died and his funeral is planned for Friday. Our itinerary at this point was a little up in the air as Pete wanted to see how people were reacting to Chavez's death. Civil wars can start for all sorts of reasons. As it turned out, once we got in, we discovered it simply meant that many places/shops were shut (official mourning) and the exchange rate was great (they want dollars as they are stable in unstable times).
What a lovely AK47 you have
How lovely of the nice foreign currency exchange chap to come into the truck for us.....ahem
We had to wait a few hours at the border as Pete can't drive the truck in Venezuela without local insurance......which he can't buy till he is in the country.....and needs to drive 20km up the road to get......but the insurance office shuts for 2 hours at lunchtime and Chavez's insistence on having a 30 minute time difference to Brazil meant we hit that window.
Once on the truck, first job was to fuel up. We were limited to 200litres of diesel but Pete went a bit over at 213litres. How much? 50 USA cents!!!! Yes, I know!!! Cheaper than water, beer, everything! Motorcycles coming in to the petrol station to fuel up weren't even paying anything because the currency doesn't go low enough to enable them to pay! Filling my car would cost about 8 UK pence, my motorbike less than 2pence. No wonder everyone here drives V8s, huge pick up trucks and old gas guzzling American cars.
They like their political posters too.....and a thumbs up!
The scenery is everything I imagined Venezuela to be. Dense, lush forest, hanging vines, hilly. The only unexpected thing is there are no dustbins anywhere and people seem to litter pretty much everywhere, which is such a shame. Our first night in the country though was at one of our most beautiful bushcamps to date, with amazing uninterrupted views of mountains and another night of adoring the stars. Back in the tents after 11 days in hotels and hammocks, they smelt a bit ripe.
en route
bushcamp
same bushcamp...i turned around a bit
Next stop Eldorado and a campsite with a Macaw, a monkey, a cayman, a Rottweiler and other 'pets'.
Pete and Mikkel fight over who the macaw loves best
Monkey with Tina Turner hair
Not a bad view from the campsite
Pete had accidentally got Mikkel a bit muddy at lunchtime so Mikkel's revenge was to find a tarantula and grab Pete (not too keen on spiders) for a chat. Apparently he jumped quite high. Wa ha ha.
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