Manaus

I've spent the last couple of days in Manaus, which is a big, hot, noisy city in the middle of the Amazonian jungle. It's not a particularly attractive city, but there are a few impressive old buildings dotted among the ugly majority of the city. Yesterday I went on a guided tour of the Teatro Amazonas, which is a 104-year old opera house built at the height of Manaus's rubber boom. Next to the theatre is São Sebastião church, and both of these buildings are located on São Sebastião square, below.

I'm told the tiling of the square is meant to represent the Encontro das Águas (Meeting of the Waters), in which the dark-coloured Rio Negro meets the light-coloured Rio Solimões, not far from Manaus. I also saw Manaus's Cathedral and its art-nouveau Municipal Market, which was very much under renovation. I then went for a tour of the Palacete Provincial, which houses an art gallery and a few other exhibitions.

In my spare time I've been sampling the Brazilian food, and the good news is that I don't think I'm going to go hungry. I've been eating lunch every day at the per-kilo restaurants that you find everywhere here. Unfortunately you can't really stuff yourself at these restaurants in the same way that you can at all-you-can-eat buffets, because you pay for what you eat (according to how much it weighs), but it's definitely a cheaper way of eating than ordering an à la carte dish. Also common here are churrascarias (meat barbecue restaurants), where the waiters bring unlimited skewers of meat to your table.

There are also juice bars everywhere, which serve dozens of weird fruit juices, many of which I've never heard of before, and which I don't think exist outside the Amazonian region. I've been trying them out one by one, and they've all been pretty good so far.

I've been trying to learn a bit of Portuguese, because I'm finding it a bit awkward not being able to speak the language. It seems that a lot of the vocabulary and grammar is similar or identical to Spanish, which means that I can understand written Portuguese fairly well, but the sound of the language is very different, which makes it difficult to understand what people are saying. Spanish is quite widely spoken here, so I think it's just about possible to get by with just speaking Spanish, but you can't always rely on that.

On my tour of the Teatro Amazonas yesterday the guide told me that there was a free concert that evening being given by a guitar orchestra. (In fact he told me that roughly twenty concerts per month are held at the theatre, about 80% of which are free, which seems like a pretty good deal for the people of Manaus.) So I went back to the theatre in the evening, and people were already queueing round the block when I arrived, although there were plenty of seats for everyone. I ended up in a box on the second floor of the theatre (here is the view of the very grand interior from my box). The concert was given by the Orquestra de Violões de Amazonas (Amazonian Guitar Orchestra), below.

They were pretty good, and most of the songs were obviously popular in Brazil, because a lot of the crowd were clapping, singing and even dancing along with them. However, the only song I recognised was Happy Birthday (sung in Portuguese), although I have no idea whose birthday it was.

This afternoon I'm leaving Manaus on a boat to Belém. I've bought myself a hammock, which I'll be sleeping in while on the boat (travelling in a cabin is very expensive). I'm not sure when exactly I'll arrive in Belém - Lonely Planet says the trip takes 3½ days, but I've been told it's 5 days, and I'm more inclined to believe the higher estimate, so I doubt I'll get there before Monday. I've read some horror stories about these boat trips on the web, so I'm not sure what I'm letting myself in for, but anyway I'm sure it'll be an experience.

Roraima

After a couple of days' rest in Santa Elena de Uairén, I booked myself on a trek to the top of Roraima, which at 2810m is the highest table mountain in the world. The trek is usually six days long, which involves spending three days going up, followed by a whole day at the top of the mountain, and then two days going down. However, on the day I wanted to leave, the tour operator that I chose to go with, Mystic Tours, had designated it as a 5-day trek. I never found out the reason for that, but it meant that if we were going to have a whole day at the top of Roraima, we would have to make the ascent in two days rather than three. Things didn't quite turn out like that, as I'll explain.

I met three members of my group the evening before the start of the trek, when Roberto, the owner of Mystic Tours, gave us a briefing in his office. They were Simon, an English teacher from Germany, and Dayana and Juan, a young Venezuelan couple. The rest of the group were due to arrive in Santa Elena the following morning on an overnight bus from Ciudad Bolívar. In the briefing Roberto gave us a lot of useful information about the trek, and then gave us some slightly less useful information when he started talking about the mystical aspects of Roraima. For example he asked us to memorise a short poem, which he advised us to recite when we arrived at the mountain, so that we would be welcomed by the spirits of Roraima. Roberto also told us that there have been a lot of UFO sightings around Roraima, and even showed us a drawing of the leader of the extra-terrestrial race that some people claim to have encountered. He explained that the extra-terrestrials have Scandinavian features, and the good news is that they come in peace.

The following morning the rest of the group arrived, and we met up at the Mystic Tours office. There were ten of us in total, and the six I haven't already mentioned were all from Spain, although there were three girls (Aitziber, Eunateio and Eztizen) from the Basque country who insisted on getting offended if anyone suggested that they were Spanish, which got a bit boring after a while. Anyway I was very glad that Simon was there, because otherwise I would have felt a bit isolated as the only non-native Spanish speaker in the group.

We also met our guide and porters for the trek. Our guide's name was Gideon, and he explained that he was a member of the local Pemón tribe, but he actually came from the only Pemón village in Guyana, which meant that he was a native English speaker. Our porters would be carrying the tents and cooking equipment and all of our food, but each of us had to carry our own sleeping bag and mat. This meant that I had to do the trek with my big backpack, which was the first time I'd ever done that. There was also a cheaper option for the trek, which was half the price of the standard trek, and which required you to carry all of your own equipment and food. Dayana and Juan chose this option, and as a result they had very heavy backpacks - rather them than me.

Before I describe the trek, I need to explain a bit of geography. The trek begins in Paraitepui, a small Pemón village about 80km from Santa Elena, and there are then a number of campsites on the way from Paraitepui to Roraima. The first campsite, called Río Tek, is about four hours' walk from Paraitepui, and most groups stay here on the first and last nights. Shortly after this campsite it's necessary to cross two rivers, Río Tek and Río Kukenan, which are knee-deep if you're lucky, and neck-deep if you're not. After these rivers there's a second campsite called Río Kukenan, where groups can stay if they manage to cross the rivers on the first day, or if they aren't able to cross the rivers coming back on the penultimate day. From the Río Kukenan campsite it's another three-hour walk to the campamento base (base camp), which is at the foot of Roraima. From there it's four hours' steep hike up to the top of Roraima, where it's possible to camp in one of several 'hotels', which are actually just sheltered spots underneath rock overhangs.

So we set off to Paraitepui mid-morning in a couple of 4x4 vehicles, and on the way we stopped off at a liquor store, where Gideon advised to buy some rum for the cold nights on top of Roraima. I bought a bottle, which probably wasn't such a bright idea, because it made my backpack just a little uncomfortably heavy. Shortly afterwards we encountered our first incident, when we had to rescue another company's vehicle that had taken the wrong road and got stuck in a ditch. Luckily our driver knew which was the correct road, so we arrived safely in Paraitepui.

After lunch we started the hike in good weather, with Roraima visible but partially covered with cloud in the distance. However, the weather stayed good for only a couple of hours more, after which the downpour started. We continued on in the driving rain, until we reached a stream a short distance before the Río Tek campsite. The three Basque girls and I managed to cross the stream without too much difficulty and arrived at the campsite in good time, but it had been raining so hard for the last hour that the level of the stream was rising incredibly quickly, and those only a few minutes behind us found it impossible to cross. Eventually with Gideon's help they managed to cross several hundred metres further upstream, by hanging onto the branches of a nearby tree. They arrived at the Río Tek campsite just before dark, which meant that we had no chance of crossing the two rivers that evening.

I was absolutely drenched when I arrived at the campsite, but I felt a lot better after changing into a dry set of clothes, although I realised that this was the start of an ultimately losing battle to keep anything I'd brought with me either dry or clean. Gideon and the porters then cooked us a filling meal, and after dinner we went to our tents for an early night. I was sharing a tent with Simon, which was great, except that each night after getting into the tent he would spray himself with insect repellent, almost choking us both to death in the process.

The weather was a lot better the following morning, and we could clearly see Roraima as well as its neighbouring tepui, Tepui Kukenan. We also awoke to the news that Albert and his wife (whose name I can't remember), a middle-aged couple from Spain, were so discouraged by the weather the previous day that they'd decided to give up and go back to Santa Elena straightaway. And so the group was down to eight.

Our first task after setting off that morning was to cross the two rivers. Since there'd been no rain since about 6pm the previous day, the water level was fairly low, but even so, the water was flowing quickly and it wasn't easy to cross. I was one of the first to cross Río Tek, and here you can see some of the others attempting the crossing. We then climbed up a hill, from where we had a view of Río Kukenan, which we also had to cross.

This was a hard day with a lot of steep hills to walk up, and again the weather was bad, so it wasn't a lot of fun. It was also clear that a pattern was being established - Simon, the Basque girls and I tended to stay together at the front, while Sara was a bit slower, and Dayana and Juan were extremely slow. Clearly the problem was that they were carrying all of their own equipment and food, which unsurprisingly was slowing them down. The plan had been to reach the top of Roraima that evening, and the five of us arrived at base camp at midday, which was early enough for us to have a rest and then carry on to the top. However, Dayana and Juan didn't arrive until about 2pm, which simply didn't give us enough time to reach the top in daylight. As a result we were forced to spend the night at base camp, so we'd have to settle for spending just one night at the top of Roraima. We did at least have good weather that afternoon, so we were able to relax, and we had good views of both Roraima and Tepui Kukenan (below).

This was the view from base camp on the morning of the third day. Even though we were camped at the foot of Roraima, we couldn't see it because the campsite was shrouded in thick fog. It had rained for most of the night and it was still raining - this was the worst weather yet, and we had to climb to the top of Roraima in it.

Anyway we got on with it, and after leaving base camp at 8am we'd reached Roraima's wall within about an hour and a half. At this point a natural ramp begins that leads to the top, which it's just about possible to walk up without climbing equipment. At times it was actually more like climbing than hiking, as we had to use our hands to lift ourselves up over boulders that were too big just to step onto. And I was doing all of this in the pouring rain while wearing a 12kg backpack - it was a pretty tough morning. Finally at about 11:15am Simon and I reached the top, shortly behind the Basque girls. It was here that I discovered how fervently the girls considered themselves Basque rather than Spanish, because when we met them they were having photos taken of themselves holding the Basque flag alongside a banner proclaiming independence for the Basque country.

We then continued to our 'hotel' for the night, where we waited for the rest of the group to turn up. At this time Roraima was still blanketed in cloud, and we were wondering if were ever going to be able to see beyond fifty metres in front of us. Shortly after 1pm, Gideon finally arrived with Sara, Dayana and Juan, at which point we had sandwiches for lunch and then rested for a while, hoping for the clouds to clear. Our patience paid off, because before long the rain stopped and the sky began to brighten, and we were finally able to see the Gran Sabana below us.

Gideon then suggested that we take the opportunity to go to the highest point of Roraima, because there was a fair chance of getting a good view. The highest point was a half-hour walk from our hotel, which took us through weird moon-like landscapes with strange rock formations and plant life. The shifting mists made things seem even more eerie. And the gamble paid off, because the clouds did clear enough for us to get some spectacular views of both the Gran Sabana (including base camp) and Tepui Kukenan. Below is a picture of me at Roraima's highest point.

After a cold night we awoke to blue skies, and this was the view from our hotel. Because we had to leave Roraima later that morning, Gideon took us to see some more of Roraima's main sights before breakfast. First we went to Bahia de Cristal, which is an area full of quartz crystals. We then passed the Fidel Castro rock formation, as well as the, erm, stone penis, before arriving at the Jacuzzi (which unfortunately contained neither hot water nor bubbles).

We then continued to the Abyss, where there's a huge vertical drop to the valley below, and finally we arrived at La Ventana (The Window), through which it's possible to see the jungle of Guyana below. (Incidentally, the only main sight we didn't see was the Triple Point, which is the point at which the borders of Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana meet. Gideon told us that very few people reach the Triple Point anyway, so in the end I don't think we missed out at all by doing the trek in only five days.) We then made our way back to our hotel, and after breakfast we packed up and got ready to leave for what would probably be the longest day of all, because we were hoping to walk all the way back to the first campsite, Río Tek, in a single day.

We found that it took just as long to descend to base camp as it had to ascend from there the previous day. Obviously it wasn't as physically exhausting going down, but it was very slow because at every step we were at risk of slipping and injuring ourselves. We were all back at base camp by 2pm, and then after a quick lunch we continued on our way. The weather worsened a bit in the afternoon, but it was still nowhere near as bad as the previous morning, and the five of us arrived together at the first of the two rivers with daylight to spare.

Gideon helped us cross Río Kukenan, and then he told us that we'd have to cross Río Tek without him while he waited for the others to arrive. I crossed Río Tek first, but not particularly successfully because I managed to fall in the water halfway through. The others then crossed in a bit of a team effort, as you can see here. It was almost dark by the time we arrived at the campsite, and we couldn't believe the rest of the group would be able to make it. However, soon after dark Sara turned up, and about an hour later Dayana and Juan finally arrived, having crossed both rivers in complete darkness with the aid of Gideon, the two porters and some torches. Despite being mainly downhill, I think we all agreed that the fourth day had been the hardest day, because we'd been walking for almost ten hours in total.

The following morning we set off for the final part of the trek, which probably was the most relaxed of all, although it still wasn't easy, particularly considering what we'd been through during the previous four days. We also had the best weather of the trek, with hardly any rain. In fact the weather was a bit too good, because I managed to get sunburnt, just to add to the hundreds of insect bites that I'd picked up over the previous few days (as had everybody else). So after about 3½ hours of walking we arrived back in Paraitepui at lunchtime, where we took the obligatory group photo (below).

On the way back to Santa Elena we stopped off briefly at Jaspe Falls, which is a waterfall that cascades onto a volcanic slab of rock, and we finally arrived back at our hostel in Santa Elena in the mid-afternoon. I was absolutely exhausted, sunburnt, covered in insect bites, and aching in pretty much every part of my body, and it was a huge relief to be back. But of course it was worth it, because I'll have forgotten about the pain before long, and it was a pretty amazing adventure. But just consider that our guide, Gideon, has been to the top of Roraima over a hundred times, and after only one day's rest he was due to start the trek all over again on Sunday. That must be one of the toughest jobs in the world.

And that's the end of my time in Venezuela. Having written all that in Santa Elena on Saturday, I've now moved onto Manaus in Brazil, where I have wi-fi and I'm finally able to upload the photos. I only spent 2½ weeks in Venezuela, which is slightly less than planned because I decided in the end not to do a tour of Gran Sabana. I admit that I wasn't expecting to like Venezuela very much, but it did exceed my expectations, because Angel Falls and Roraima were two of the best things that I've seen on my trip.

OK, I'd better go now and study my Portuguese phrasebook.

Ciudad Bolívar and Angel Falls

After such a long bus journey from Mérida I'd planned to spend two whole days in Ciudad Bolívar, but I ended up spending only one, because I didn't particularly like the place. Things got off to a bad start when on my arrival the owner of the hostel was very rude to me for absolutely no reason. He then did it again the next day, just walking away in the middle of our conversation when I simply suggested that I was considering booking an Angel Falls trip through an agency other than his.

Anyway there are a few sights in Ciudad Bolívar, including a Cathedral, which is next to the main square, in which a military ceremony of some kind was going on. There are also quite a few old colonial buildings in the historic centre, such as these arcaded houses alongside the river, although this one wasn't in such great shape (it looked like there'd been a fire).

The Orinoco River itself is another of the attractions. There were a lot of fisherman throwing in their nets and not seeming to catch very much, but drawing a big crowd anyway, some of whom you can see at the top of that photo. There are a couple more photos of the Orinoco here and below.

After seeing the sights on Tuesday, I booked myself on a 3-day/2-night trip to Angel Falls, leaving the following morning. As you may already know, the big attraction of Angel Falls is that it's the highest waterfall in the world, with a 979m drop from top to bottom. The falls are in an isolated location in Canaima National Park, which is inaccessible by road, and that meant that I had to fly. The flights from Ciudad Bolívar and back are probably the only flights that I'll take in my whole South America trip (obviously excluding the flights to and from South America).

Outside Ciudad Bolívar airport I saw the aeroplane of Jimmy Angel, who discovered Angel Falls by flying over it in this plane (and fairly obviously the falls are named after him). The aircraft in which we travelled to Canaima actually wasn't too dissimilar from Jimmy Angel's - it was a tiny 6-seater Cessna like this one. On the way out to Canaima, I got the co-pilot's seat, which didn't seem particularly safe, because all of the plane's controls were within my reach. In fact at one point I accidentally bashed one of the levers with my knee, but I don't think the pilot noticed, and it didn't seem to make any difference. This was my view from the front seat - note that the pilot is reading a newspaper rather than concentrating on flying the plane.

We made it safely to Canaima, where we stopped off briefly at the Tiuna Tours lodge to meet the rest of the group (eleven in total), most of whom had arrived the previous day. We then headed off again almost straightaway because we were due to spend that night at a camp near Angel Falls, which involved a five hour trip in a motorised canoe. The walk to the canoe took us past Laguna Canaima, which is a picturesque spot from which we could see four waterfalls. We were also able to get a close-up view of the right-hand waterfall, called Ucaima Falls (below).

From this spot we could also see a fairly perfect table mountain (known as a tepui in the indigenous Pemón language) in the distance. There are over a hundred tepuis in this region, which makes it a pretty unique landscape, and in fact Angel Falls itself drops from the top of one, Auyan Tepui.

It's currently the rainy season, so the river is particularly high at the moment, which made the journey in the canoe pretty eventful. Who needs to go white-water rafting when you can ride rapids (against the flow) in a motorised canoe? It took us about five attempts to get past one set of rapids, and we were taking on so much water that I was certain we were going to sink, but we did eventually make it through.

In the late afternoon we arrived at the camp, which was on a small island about 5km from Angel Falls. A short walk from the camp, we were able to get our first sighting of the falls, although we'd get a lot closer the following morning. We also had this view of another part of Auyun Tepui in the opposite direction. We then had a few hours' free time until dinner, which was a very tasty dish of chicken cooked on an open fire. It was particularly impressive considering it was pouring with rain the whole time the cooks were preparing the meal, and in fact it hardly stopped raining all night.

After spending a not particularly comfortable night sleeping in hammocks, we were up at 5am the following morning for the 3km hike to the Angel Falls viewpoint, which is the closest that we were able to get to the falls. Since our camp was the closest of all the camps to the falls, we were the first group to arrive, and the view was pretty spetacular, as I hope you can get some idea of in this photo. It seemed incredible that such a huge waterfall was flowing almost from the very top of a mountain. I tried to time how long the water takes to fall from the top to the bottom, but it was impossible because the water drops such a long distance that most of it either evaporates or turns into mist long before it reaches the bottom. And just to prove that I was there...

We spent about half an hour admiring the view, and then hiked back to the camp, packed up our stuff and travelled back in the canoe to the Tiuna Tours lodge in time for lunch. In the afternoon we went to another waterfall, Sapo Falls, which involved a short canoe trip and then a 20-minute walk. The walk wasn't much fun, because the area was infested with puri puri, which are horrible little bugs similar to mosquitoes, and I got bitten a lot. Anyway the attraction of Sapo Falls is that it's possible to walk behind the falls, allowing us to appreciate the sheer power of the waterfall. This is the view from the start of the path behind the falls - at this point I put my camera in a waterproof bag, because we were about to get absolutely soaked. At several places along the path there was so much spray that it was impossible to see anything at all, but we all made it through to the other side, where this was the view. We were then able to go for a bathe underneath the waterfall, which felt a bit like someone was dropping bricks on my head.

The following day I spent the morning lazing around, and after lunch I walked to Canaima airport with Laibond and Denise, a couple from Hong Kong that were in my group. It was there that we got a bit of a nasty shock, because Laibond discovered that around US$160 had been stolen from his wallet. I then checked my wallet too, and sure enough I found that I'd also had money stolen, but only 150Bs (£15) in my case, because fortunately I'd left most of my money in my big backpack in the hostel in Ciudad Bolívar. The money must have been taken when we went to Sapo Falls the previous afternoon - we'd left our rooms unlocked because we hadn't been given keys, and our guide had assured us that it was perfectly safe. Obviously it's not a big deal in my case, but it did leave a bit of a bad taste in the mouth, and Canaima was pretty much the last place I'd have expected something like that to happen.

After arriving back in Ciudad Bolívar, I headed to the hostel to pick up my belongings, and then I returned to the bus station to catch yet another overnight bus, this time to Santa Elena de Uairén, which is in the south-east corner of Venezuela, close to the border with Brazil. I'm going to recuperate here for a couple of days, because I've had a bit of a cold ever since that 24-hour bus journey from Mérida to Ciudad Bolívar, and I also have insect bites all over my body that are itching like crazy. I'm hoping both of those things will get better by Monday, because that's when I'm planning to start the 6-day hike to the top of Mount Roraima and back.

Mérida

So I made it to Mérida, my first stop in Venezuela. Mérida is situated near the northern tip of the Andes at an altitude of 1600m, and the cool of the mountains was a welcome relief from the heat and humidity of the Caribbean coast, which I found unbearable. Mérida is also the adventure sports capital of Venezuela, and it's a good place to try such activities as canyoning, paragliding and white-water rafting.

After the exhausting journey from Colombia I decided that Friday should be a rest day, so pretty much all I did in the afternoon was have a quick look around town and book a paragliding trip for the following day. I also had a look at Mérida's famous teleférico, which is the highest cable car system in the world (it peaks at a height of 4675m). It also happens to be the highest cable car system in the world that doesn't work, because it hasn't worked for over two years.

Another thing I did was discover how the currency exchange system works here in Venezuela. The Venezuelan government enforces currency controls that mean that the Venezuelan bolívar is currently pegged at a rate of 2.60 to the US dollar, so for any official currency exchange transaction such as withdrawing bolívares from an ATM, paying by credit card or changing money in a bank, 2.60 is the exchange rate you'll get. That rate might have been realistic a decade ago, but Venezuela's economy has gone down the tubes since then, and today a more appropriate rate would be between 7 and 8 bolívares to the US dollar. Fortunately there exists an active (although illegal) black market in which it's possible to exchange US dollars or euros for bolívares at a fairer rate.

I knew about this situation before I arrived in Venezuela, so I brought a large supply of US dollars with me from Colombia (which obviously isn't ideal for security reasons, but I didn't have a lot of choice). I wasn't sure how the black market operated, but I soon found out, because the guy working at the paragliding agency offered me a good rate if I exchanged a large number of dollars. He didn't have enough bolívares on him, so after making a couple of discreet phone calls we went round to a nearby bathroom store that was owned by a friend of his, and he was able to sort me out with the necessary cash. An added bonus from this transaction was that I was able to fix the broken shoulder strap on my small rucksack, which had been bothering me for weeks, using the elastic band that was wrapped around the large wad of notes.

If you're like me (which you're probably not), you may be wondering why you can't exchange US dollars for bolívares at the black market rate, then change them back to US dollars at the official rate, thus making a guaranteed profit of about 200% (e.g. $100 buys about 750Bs at the black market rate, which buys about $300 at the official rate). Well the answer to that is that no bank or 'casa de cambio' will buy back bolívares, which I suppose is a public admission that the official exchange rate is nonsense.

Another oddity about Venezuela is that petrol is almost free - I'm told that you can fill your car's entire tank for less than 50p. A consequence of this is that most people couldn't care less about fuel efficiency, so they tend to buy huge, gas-guzzling, American cars, and drive like maniacs. Below is a picture of a typical Venezuelan car.

Saturday was my birthday, so for the sake of doing something a bit special I went paragliding in the afternoon. The starting point for the flight was the top of a hill called Las González, which is about an hour's drive from Mérida. It was raining when we left Mérida, and the rain got even heavier as we approached Las González, so I was expecting the paragliding to be cancelled. However, just a few minutes before we arrived, the rain stopped and blue sky appeared, so in the end the conditions were pretty good.

Having never done paragliding before, I obviously did a tandem flight. My pilot didn't seem to be much more than 18 years old, but he appeared to know what he was doing, so that was OK. Here is where we set off from, and in my July 2010 album there are several more photos that I took while airborne, starting with the one below. I think we were in the air for about 25 minutes, after which we had a soft landing.

I'd hoped to do a two-day white-water rafting trip starting on Sunday, but even though it's supposedly the high season for tourism in Venezuela, none of the tour agencies had a trip leaving until Tuesday, and I didn't want to hang around in Mérida that long. Instead I enquired about renting a mountain bike and going for a ride in the mountains, but then I had an attack of laziness when I woke up on Sunday morning, and I decided I didn't really feel like doing that. So I put plan C into action, which was to go on a long walk around town (even though there's not really a lot to see in the town itself).

One of the places I went to was the bus station, where I discovered that there was no direct bus to Ciudad Bolívar today (Monday), which was when I'd planned to leave. Having read a few people's accounts on the web about what a nightmare it is to get from Mérida to Ciudad Bolívar if you have to change buses, I decided that the best option was to catch the direct bus on Sunday evening at 7pm. It meant that I left Mérida a bit earlier than planned, but that's how I find myself now Ciudad Bolívar on Monday evening after a 24-hour bus journey, which wasn't a lot of fun. I plan to spend tomorrow trying to find a place on a tour to Angel Falls.

Santa Marta & Parque Nacional Tayrona

Santa Marta is famous for being the place where Símon Bolívar, the great South American liberator, died in 1830. It also has a white cathedral (below) and a not so nice beach with a container port at one end, but not a lot else to write home about, so I only stayed there one night before heading into Tayrona National Park.

In Tayrona I stayed at Camping Don Pedro, which was a muddy 45-minute walk from where the minibus dropped me at the end of the road leading from the park entrance. It's located in a tranquil spot a short walk from Arrecifes beach, which is the closest beach to the park entrance. In the spirit of budget travel, I decided that renting a tent was too expensive, and I chose instead to sleep in a hammock. However, I soon discovered that this wasn't the most comfortable option, particularly as it got surprisingly cold in the middle of the night, and I had no blanket.

On my first afternoon in the park I went for a walk along the coast to see some of the nearby beaches. I arrived first at Arrecifes beach, which is scattered with huge boulders that were once worshipped by the indigenous Tayrona people. It's dangerous to swim in the sea off Arrecifes beach because it has a strong current (many people have died here), so the beach was pretty much deserted. I continued to La Amarilla beach (photos here and below), which is much more how you'd expect a Caribbean beach to look. I then passed through La Piscina beach, after which I walked past a colony of these funny blue crabs, which would scuttle away sideways into their dens as I approached them. I then arrived at Cabo San Juan de la Guía, which is the final beach you can get to without walking for several hours.

In the interests of travelling light I'd left my big backpack at the hostel in Santa Marta and brought only the bare minimum in my small rucksack. However, it turned out that I'd brought less than the bare minimum, because I forgot my swimming shorts, which meant that I couldn't really go swimming in the sea. I also forgot my torch, which is pretty essential when staying in places without mains electricity.

The following day I considered walking to El Pueblito, which is a pre-Hispanic village about 1½ hours' walk beyond Cabo San Juan de la Guía. However, my feet were hurting so much (due to my sandals rubbing against mosquito bites on my feet) that I decided against it, and instead just walked to La Amarilla beach again, had lunch there, then went back and read a book in my hammock. That turned out to be a wise move, because it starting raining soon after I got back to my hammock, and didn't stop until night-time.

I left the park early the next morning, returned to Santa Marta to pick up my backpack, and then began the long journey to Mérida in Venezuela. This involved catching a bus to Maicao, which is a town near the border, and then getting a colectivo (shared taxi) to Maracaibo, the first big city on the Venezuelan side, and finally an overnight bus to Mérida. I very nearly missed the bus to Mérida, because I completey forgot that there's a half-hour time difference between Colombia and Venezuela (thanks to a presidential decree by Hugo Chávez in 2007). I wandered out of the bus terminal to look for the 10:30pm bus at what I thought was 10pm, only to find it almost full and about to leave. I was very lucky to get one of the last two remaining seats, moments before the bus departed.

I've also had an interesting introduction to the way things work in Venezuela. In the journey in the colectivo, which was a huge, ancient, American-made car, I was sandwiched in the front seat between the driver and a friend of his. During the three-hour journey the driver stopped four times to allow his friend to go and buy beer for the two of them - at one point the driver had a beer in one hand and his mobile phone in the other, and I'm not sure how he was managing to control the car. Also, soon after crossing the border, the driver's friend instructed me to give him 20 bolívares (about £2) so that he could bribe an official not to search our luggage (I'm not sure why it was my responsibility to pay the bribe). The driver also jumped almost every single red light he came across, as did pretty much everybody else.

Having said all these things, the lady at the tourist information booth at Mérida bus station was incredibly polite to me and even complimented me on my Spanish, so it's definitely not all bad here.

Cartagena

I spent the last couple of days in Cartagena, which many people consider to be the most beautiful city in South America. And I'd agree, it probably just about beats Cuzco for the title of the most attractive city I've seen so far. I hear that Ouro Preto in Brazil is the only other South American city that comes close.

On Saturday I saw the sights of Cartagena, starting with the Puerto del Reloj (Clock Gate), which is the main gateway to the old town, leading to the Plaza de los Coches. I also saw several of Cartagena's churches, including the Iglesia de San Pedro Claver (here and here), the Iglesia de Santo Domingo (the city's oldest church), and the Cathedral (here and here, and a rare inside view here). I also went for a walk along Las Murallas, the old town's protective walls, which you can see below.

But maybe the best bits of Cartagena's old town are the ordinary houses, which, in contrast to the numerous white cities that I've visited, are very colourful, and remain pretty much unchanged after hundreds of years. There are a few examples here, here and here. But just to show you that that's not the full story of Cartagena, here is a photo of Bocagrande, which is a wealthy, modern part of Cartagena, and has the big hotels where most package tourists stay. And apart from these few areas that I've mentioned, most of the rest of Cartagena is pretty awful.

On Saturday evening I met up with Boyang, who once again was in the same town as me at the same time. We also met up with a Chinese friend of his, as well as a female Japanese friend of his Chinese friend (the only common language was Spanish). We were walking to the old town to get something to eat when the evening took a bit of a bizarre turn. In the Plaza de los Coches we bumped into another member of Boyang's Spanish course who's currently studying in Cartagena, and who that evening was acting as an interpreter for a group of Chinese travel journalists who were visiting Cartagena. When we met them they were interviewing a man who we soon discovered was the brother of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (presumably the man himself wasn't available). We hung around for a bit, and then joined the entourage as they were shown around the old town. We ended up in what appeared to be a private party in the garden of the Palacio de la Inquisición (the Spanish Inquisition museum), where there was a band playing traditional Colombian folk music.

We eventually left them a couple of hours later, at which point we were finally able to go for dinner. Later that night we went to Café Havana, which is a salsa club with a live band. I'd really been hoping to see a live salsa band before I left Colombia, so I finally had my wish fulfilled. I wasn't really in the mood for dancing, but a feisty Colombian girl (with her boyfriend sitting nearby) did her best to embarrass me by dragging me onto the dance floor, as you can see below.

On Sunday I once again wandered around the old town, and I also went to the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, which is a huge fortress built in the 17th century to defend the city. There was a pretty good view from the top.

That's about all I have to say about Cartagena, but just to show that I've got my finger on my pulse, look at what the BBC have to say about Medellín. Have they been reading my blog again?

I've now arrived in Santa Marta, which is another city on the Caribbean coast. I'm only planning to stay here for one night, after which I'll head into Tayrona National Park. I'm not feeling particularly happy at the moment, because at some point on my journey here I managed to lose my iPod. I'm not sure where it went, but I think it probably just fell out of my bag. It's pretty annoying, but I guess something like that was bound to happen at some point on my trip. I expect I'll cope without it.

Mompós

Monday was the first day of a two-day celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of Colombia's independence. This meant that there was a big fireworks display in Medellín on Monday evening, which I wasn't able to go to because I'd decided to travel to Mompós that night. It also meant that the crowds were so big that it took me half an hour to get into the metro station to catch a train to Medellín's northern bus station.

From then on my journey didn't improve much. I had to take a twelve-hour overnight bus to Magangué, followed by a short boat trip to Bodega, and finally an hour's journey in a colectivo (shared taxi) to Mompós. The driver of the first bus chose to set the air-con to sub-zero, and I didn't have my coat with me in the bus, so it was like a prolonged torture for the whole night. I wasn't the only one that thought it was too cold - those in the know had brought blankets, but several others were just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and I could see that they were really suffering. Anyway I've learnt my lesson - from now on I'll take my full winter gear on board any long-distance bus, particularly if it's sweltering outside.

Eventually after a 17-hour journey I made it to Mompós, and I guess it was just about worth the effort. Mompós is situated next to the Magdalena River, and it was a major port from the 16th century until the late 19th century, when the river silted up and shipping was diverted to Magangué on the other branch of the river. As a result Mompós was left isolated, and not a lot has changed in the town since then. As usual Lonely Planet exaggerates a bit when it says that many streets and squares look exactly like they did in the 16th century - well I don't think they had motorbikes and mobile phone repair shops in the 16th century. But it is true that there's hardly a single modern building in the town centre, and everywhere you see well preserved colonial buildings.

There's not a lot to do in Mompós, except walk around town or relax in a rocking chair. You really do see rocking chairs everywhere, including in my hostel (and here I am relaxing in mine). It was also absolutely baking hot, so for the most part I just took it easy for a few days, did lots of reading, and drank lots of fruit juice. Also last night (Thursday) I met up with Boyang again, who happened to be in Mompós at the same time as me - he's currently travelling around Colombia for a couple of weeks before his new semester starts next week.

I'm not going to give you a guided tour this time, but there are several photos of Mompós in my July 2010 album, starting with this one:

I've now arrived in Cartagena on the Caribbean coast after another 10-hour bus journey in ice-cold air-con (but I was better prepared this time).

And I'm not sure if this has been reported much back home, but the big news here is that Venezuela has severed diplomatic relations with Colombia. I'm not sure if this is going to affect me in any way - as far as I know the border is still currently open.