My plan was to go from Manaus to Belem by boat. There are no roads and the only other option is by airplane. Since it is a multi day trip by boat, people sleep in hammocks. I saw one picture of how crowded these hammock spaces can get and I decided to get a cabin instead. In cabin, the 4 day trip costs twice as much as by air, but I am glad I took this option. It is true that for the most part you don’t see much of the Amazon since the boat doesn’t keep close to the shore. But one day we took a side channel that was not very wide and you had a spectacular view for hours.
Another thing that makes the trip worth is the sole experience of life on that river. Since space is so limited and Brazilians are so open, you get to know a lot of people. When you finally arrive, it’s almost like a big family. They stop about in 5 ports on the way, besides that, all you see is the brown water of the Amazon, the forest and some isolated houses of families that live from fishing. The children come out in canoes to beg for presents. The people on the boat then throw them bags with sweets or cloth. Sometimes they attach to the boat, which is quite adventurous and then sell fresh fish or fruits to the passengers. I gave a bag of cookies to one small boy who came on the boat with his father to sell fish fillet. As he came back upstairs he brought me a char of fillet. As I grabbed for my money to pay him he signaled a “no” with his hands and making another gesture that told me that he considered it to be an exchange for the cookies. This impressed me really a lot. He and his father were 2 hours away from their home, so they kept their canoe attached to the boat while he sat there watching the river with me.
This river trip has really been the best traveling experience yet.

The 15 hour buss ride from the border over Boa Vista to Manaus somewhat made up for my lost trip in Venezuela.
Manaus was very different then I expected. Since it is in the middle of the Amazon I somehow expected a sleepy town with bad infrastructure, but the opposite is true. I only spent 2 days in Manaus but of what I saw it is a vibrant city with good infrastructure compared with the cities in Venezuela.
The city is on the “Rio Negro” which later flows into the Amazon River. I asked around why this river is so “black” but I didn’t really get an answer, I just know that it really deserves that name.

In Porlamar on Isla Margerita I stayed in Hotel Chez Dacar; just wanted to mention it since it was a good deal. Going back I took the short route of the ferry to Cumana and took the bus for the remaining part back to Puerto La Cruz. While I was watching the water on the ferry, suddenly I saw a dolphin jump in the distance, then another and another; it was a big group of maybe 50 animals swimming right towards the boat. When they were close one dolphin jumped right in front of me and then dove to swim under the boat. Also the buss ride that followed was really worth it as there were many nice views of the sea. The bus then continued to Ciudad Bolivar. Near that city is Puerto Ordaz with a very nice park worth visiting.
My plan was to go visit the “Salto Angel”, the highest waterfall on the planet. Because it is in a very remote location I asked around where the cheapest starting point is. From several people I got the answer Santa Helena on the border with Brazil. That was ok for me since I wanted to go there anyway. During the 10 hour buss ride we stopped at one military check point and they searched the entire buss thoroughly. Every passenger had to take everything out of his bag and they checked every single piece of clothes you had; worse then every airport search I’ve ever seen. I got a little bit into trouble because they asked me for the receipt or the bill of my laptop and camera. I had it somewhere in the back of my mind that I should take them with me on my trip, but I only remembered when they asked me and it was too late. Fortunately they let me go. So remember to always take the receipt of your electronic devices with you when you travel.
When I arrived at the border, I was badly disappointed. Sometimes you get the same bad information even from several different people. It was the case now since Santa Helena was not the best starting point to visit the “Salto Angel”, but the worst. Flights were so expensive and the ideal starting point was 2 days away in reverse direction, so I decided to go on to Brazil. I was very disappointed since all my time in Venezuela I was waiting to see this waterfall.
One thing I only realized when I left Venezuela. Gasoline is very cheap in this country, at the time it was 5 times cheaper then drinking water in bottle and 12 times cheaper then gas in neighboring country Brazil. So at the border you notice long lines of cars for no apparent reason, until you see where they start. They are Brazilians crossing the border to fill their cars with cheap gasoline in Venezuela.

After Merida I went back to Caracas and then straight ahead to Puerto La Cruz and Porlamar on Isla Margerita. It was a tiring 14 hour trip by bus and ferry. Unfortunately because of my computer problems I couldn’t fully enjoy the nice beach of Playa El Agua, but of course it was enough to catch sunburn (although I have been in South America for over 4 months, I didn’t have much color because I stayed in Bogota and Caracas the last two). I planned to go on to Trinidad from here, because I read that there is a ferry, but after a day of searching for that ferry I found out that it doesn’t exist anymore, so I will head back to mainland Venezuela.

At the end of my stay in Caracas I made a short weekend trip into the Andes, to Merida in Particular. Getting there by bus was actually more interesting then Merida it self. You cross a 3500m pass where it’s pretty cool with just a T-Shirt. Merida is not so high so it can get quite warm. If you are lucky and the gondola up to the snowy Pico Bolivar isn’t closed for maintenance (yes I didn’t have that luck), then you can make your way up to 5000m, supposedly the highest gondola in the world. If you visit Merida you can stay in Apart Hotel Doña Cleta, it’s a simple hotel in apartment style a little away from the center, one of the best deals I have seen so far.

A difficult time lies behind me. I already had this paragraph written for Caracas, but then something terrible happened. My computer broke down. The hard disk completely crashed, I couldn’t access any of my data anymore. I had made regular backups but still I lost a few days of work and half of my pictures from Caracas. I had some long nights until I finally got the system running again. But that was not all. I noticed that somebody stole my “emergency money” out of my bag. It must have happened in one of the hotels, but I can’t say for sure in which one. Now I don’t feel like writing everything again, so I write just a few things.Caracas is near the coast but up in the mountains, 800m above see level. The climate is quite nice and the air feels relatively fresh for a city that size, thanks to the modern Metro. I Stayed in Hotel Villa d’Este, they have a monthly rate, which gives you a discount of about 70% compared to the price per night, so it was ideal for my purpose. Sending a package to Switzerland was an adventure and you should calculate enough time because you have to do all the work with the stamps yourself.