Weld done us!

 

Simon Bolivar, Venezuela's most famous son (sorry Huge Chavez), identified three great fools in history, sticking himself at the top of the rankings along with JC and Don Quixote. However, times move on and records are there to be broken and I'm sure if 'El Libertador' has been keeping up to date with events in his home country from his independent cloud in the sky he'll concede that a worthy attempt to dislodge the big three from the top of the fruit tree has recently been made. This entry will cover the final 'leg' of the journey from Manaus in Brasil to the finishing line - the Caribbean coast of Venezuela. Its was a Simon Jones leg: long and with several painful breaks but ultimately leading to glory; in his case the leading role in the 2009 English Ashes victory, in our's Isla de Margarita and the strange knowledge that we've just cycled all the way across the continent. What an odd thing to do!

Manaus to Boa Vista. 22nd to 28th June. 839 Kms

You might remember we had washed up in Manaus following a very 'crafty' journey down the Amazon. Perhaps we hadn't stressed enough that it became obvious somewhere back around Quito that our timetable was looking a little tight and we thus exhausted all available resources to convince ourselves that the Amazon to the Caribbean could be accomplished in the three weeks we'd left ourselves. These resources amounted to a map whose small scale encompassed most of the continent (letters on it obliterated entire days), a 'blog' written on the same route some years before by an accomplished-sounding US cyclist and the selective highlighting of certain cells on the spreadsheet I'd set up to see how fast we could go. From these sources we derived respectively that we could expect to have to negotiate an enormous letter 'u', would be cycling only on 'flat and quick roads' and could accomplish it all in 22 hours. That sort of selective statistical analysis had been forecasting some pretty spectacular results for Esso for years! It was going to be, in short, a walkover.

The "flat" road out of Manaus. According to some Sepo on his blog. Ok, it's not mountainous, but there wasn't one "flat" 100m of road for days!

Unfortunately it soon appeared that Al was really going to have to 'walk over' as his bike frame snapped in half the second day out of Manuas. Hastily consulting the spreadsheet to see what effect pushing his bike to the Caribbean would have our on our arrival date it seemed we were now projected to finish in 2018. Crikey, Delta Airlines will be bust by then as we'll have won our court case against them (Nicolas Cage will be playing heroic prosecuting lawyer Mike Delaney in the film remake, punching the air as the judge intones gravely: "...to the charge of being a bunch of nobs... guilty on all counts"!). Uhm, anyway, Al's bike had conclusively fallen to bits and we were now 140Km up the jungle from Manaus. After pushing the culprit (the bike, not Al) back to the nearest town it became clear either Col or I would have to accompany Monty Junior back to the city to spend a day trawling industrial estates for a welder, while the other remained sitting by the pool in a hotel we'd found, guarding the other bikes and bags - ie.. drinking mojitos. On this note I should add that our team is a microcosm of how a prefect society should work and the difference between these two tasks meant nothing to either Col or myself. Therefore, after losing the toss of a coin, I cheerfully set off back to Manaus without regretting for one moment that it was that Colin and not I left pool-side. Ho hum. To make matters worse this catastrophic bike failure had happened in the one country where speaking Spanish is no massive advantage (as regards Portuguese... people keep telling me its easy to learn, being 'just like Spanish' but, to me, this just means lets all speak Spanish?) Happily the enormous crack through the bike was eloquent enough in explaining the problem and just listing the events of the next day should suffice to explain both how odd our days were becoming and how tight our logistics were: Got the bike welded in a technical college as an example piece for a class of apprentices, raced to catch a bus back to the scene of the disaster, woke up Col, set off after lunch and sweated 75 Kms north, turned down a lane into the jungle on the off-chance of finding a place to kip, found a fishing lodge where Pedro the chef tried to cook more than we could eat (the final plate of bass did it), Toucans sit on our bikes and Macaws deliberately attempt to defecate on Col's head but sadly just fail. Yes, the Paraiso de Pesca was one of those strange blessings that are sometimes found in unlikely places.

A cheeky Toucan has a look to see what he can make off with at Paraiso de Pesca fishing lodge.

The following day we had an interesting experience as we cycled through an Indigenous Reserve with a somewhat violent history. Road users are asked not to stop during this 120Km stretch and a Ranger of some sort gave us specific instructions that basically amounted to 'don't wind the natives up'. Perhaps he'd heard about Colin's habitual foreign antics (there should be a 'link' on the word 'antics' to Colin being chased around the world by various taxi drivers but sadly no such footage exists). Happily these natives proved more tolerant than Mark Dainty in Andorra and we escaped intact, the enforced stops that cyclists need being accompanied by only imitation whistling arrows and shouts of 'he's weeing on your sacred tree - shoot!!' as we all returned, ahh, remained in primary school mode. I suspect it goes without saying that this was the best preserved tract of jungle we passed through, managed as it is by people who know what they're doing, and so we had the privilege of seeing wild monkeys (that is, not domesticated ones, not ones going berserk), otters, toucans, macaws and a lovely old tortoise. Or maybe it was a young one, its hard to tell. Oh, and I nearly cycled into the back end of a jaguar. This being the jungle the result was not a set-to in the street with a Hooray Henry motorist but rather some quiet thanks that the cat had decided to do a runner, most likely in surprise as I'm the weirdest looking thing in the rainforest since Sting. Anyway, all very exciting.

Some thoughts on cycling through the jungle. I mean, it can get a little tedious I have to confess. You're not really seeing a great deal and, funnily enough, it gets pretty warm and humid in the old rainforest. In short, not one for your next cycling holiday. Also we noted that, quite to the contrary of what our Sepo friend had predicted on his blog, the jungle was pretty hilly. Indeed, I'd suggest there are no flat bits at all for the first 200Km from Manaus, the entire stretch undulating in 'Big Dipper' fashion. You can well imagine we found this 'unwelcome' and our cycling predecessor began to receive the sort of imaginary correspondence we've been penning in our minds to other purveyors of route-note-rhubarb. On further reading of this chap's blog however it became clear that he was one of a common breed: cyclists who catch the bus. Claim to be 'cycling across a continent'? Making very very fast progress? Advice on the road ahead becoming a little flaky? Bike strangely clean...? You bussed half of it! Go back and start again! Hold on, this a self-righteous rant!! Apologies, born of the frustration that comes from wrestling with all the things that go wrong on the tough or boring bits other people sensibly 'miss out' I guess. Talking of which we're now in Boa Vista after four consecutive days over 150Km took us across the Rio Branco, out of deforested grasslands and into more naturally open savanna. Here comes the next string of events that meant our rallying cry from now on was "on to the next disaster".

Boa Vista to Puerto Ordaz (Venezuela). June 30th to July 7th. 878 Km

Things that make you go hmmm. After a rest day in Boa Vista (the only one for these three weeks) to watch Spain overcome their demons and subsequently wind-up the Germans in the sort of way that would make even the tolerant folk of the Waimiri-Atroari go 'Dainty' (conga chaos) we set off. Oh no we didn't because the Venezuelan consul was at a high level meeting all morning and wouldn't be sober enough to sign our tourist cards until the afternoon. Tolerance with this sort of guff was running lower than duct tape (reading our earlier blogs you'd appreciate we thought they were lucky we'd turned up to get our papers stamped in the first place) and we got shirty. Then we got trousery cos they wouldn't let us in the consulate in cycling shorts. Near diplomatic incident now. Our official rubber-stamping jotter-blotter thus set us the unlikely task of 100Km in under four hours to reach somewhere to hang our hammocks. What was unlikely became impossible when 'the Manaus weld' gave way 44Km up the road and we were faced with a hitch back to Boa Vista. Actually, we're not very good at hitching so we walked back to a roadside bar with the patient and called a cab. We're cyclists not hippies.

Awaiting a bus back to Boa Vista after Al's frame breaks for the 2nd time in a week.

Some excitement here as I waited alone for the second taxi when a gang of drunken yahoos appeared out of nowhere and waved machetes about exhausting my reserves of British Phlegm in studious display of disinterest. The next morning weld 2 (now with even more welding stuff was performed) and we were underway again, our progress towards to Caribbean akin to El Del's efforts to get through his bedroom door in college after a big night at Cindy's. The wild back and forth lurching of this day left us marooned by the roadside some 75Km short of the Venezuelan border. A truly grisly affair ensued here; simply recalling it is pretty traumatic. Al has assured me he's going to check in for hypnotherapy on his return so the memory never haunts him again. So, just for the record... we were forced to pitch the tent in a sort of ditch in the absence of any accommodation, the sheer quantity of mosquitos making sleeping in hammocks absolutely out of the question. It wasn't hot in that tent, it was a steam room, a pressure cooker. The lack of space, welcome in the high Andes, proved to be a serious problem. Seriously, after two minutes I was drenched in sweat. Only partly my own. Sometime later it felt like the air beds were starting to float. Sweat poured off the roof and through it all opening the canvas was banned, the mosquitos waiting patiently outside to come to the party. Of course, some got in anyway. Torches, flicked on as searchlights to find and kill the blighters, illuminated the drawn faces of men in a waking nightmare. There was no sleep on July the 1st. July the 2nd would have been a rather beautiful day, up into the mountains that loom up out of the Amazonian plains, but as it was exhaustion made the climbs to the border and the start of the panoramic Gran Sabana particularly draining.

Looks innocuous enough, eh? This, actually, is the very spot where Hell joins up with Brazil. The nightmare camp, just shy of the Venezuelan border.

We got into Santa Elena, Venezuela, just in time to have some cash stolen from our room, go 'off on one' with the hotelier, enjoy a trip to the local Sweeney where Al could complete the set of fingerprints left behind in Latin America (ah, but whose have a comment saying 'suspected of telling pork pies' next to them dear reader eh??!!) and leave under a cloud. That said, the bikes were still in one piece and the next day dawned clear to afford a dramatic passage through the flat-topped mountain scenery of the Gran Sabana which, unlike the jungle, is a really tremendous place to go cycling. Venezuelan army check points were being particularly friendly, one of them run by (another) Newcastle United sympathiser whose English vocab stretched only to the word 'Magpies'. Good lord. We meet a Canadian cyclist touring the Gran Sabana near the end of the day."You guys rock" she tells us. Indeed we do, and it is because our bikes are now held together by wire and hope.

Its off the edge of the Gran Sabana and down into three big days of hot hot heat though gold mining country. A meeting with a young Australian gold explorer in the town of Tumeremo is most instructive into the mayhem surrounding this 'industry'. I don't think I've ever met anyone more Australian, and that's including Big Aussie Joe. He's clearly upset at people shouting "Gringo" at him in the street (we sympathise with him on this point) and he's taken matters into his own hands. "Aw, mate, I've had to get hold of a few and tell em, I'm not a ****ing Sepo, I'm a ****ing Aussie mate"!!! Of that, there truly was no doubt. However, given he speaks no Spanish I can't imagine any of the locals are any wiser, though doubtless a few have been mildly terrified. Tumeremo was the scene of the latest mechanical delay as it turned out my rear rack had cracked in three places. Given Col had beaten me by a few days to this sort of show-stopper, and had thus already bagged the big-bolt-bodge of Calingasta, the delay was the length of time it took us to repair it with; 6 rusty nails, 6 cable ties, a bit of wire. Two days and some careful speed bump negotiations later we were down on the bank of the River Orinoco in Ciudad Guayana / Puerto Ordaz. Bikes, nails, welds, big bolts, fools sitting on top - all still where they should be. Preparing for one last 'big push' in this 'new town' we visited a shopping centre and, in the confusion caused by being amongst the sort of vulgar consumer hell that blights parts of Venezuela, I lost my treasured cycling cap.  Dismay. I then fall victim to a dress code and get thrown out of a bar. A bar in a shopping centre. Rage. A replacement hat is obligatory as the sun is scorching so I'm now wearing the remains of a pillow case on my fingers, wrists and head and can no longer really complain about people staring at me in the street. We're all catching the sun now and Al is having to mimic my 'finger puppets' while Col is wearing a thermal shirt. In the jungle. In addition to the pillow casing I've got long johns rolled up to protect my knees and so, looking like a Monty Python sketch its 'Tally-ho!' and off to the coast!

Ciudad Guayana / Puerto Ordaz - Chacopata. 8th - 10th July. 433 Km

On the way out of Puerto Ordaz a fellow cyclist gives me a mango to eat. Its something to do while Al replaces a broken chain. We cross the Orinoco by ferry which is mighty fine, weave through some drunks on the far bank, and lay into the hottest day to date as we cycle 200Km across the edge of the river delta to Maturin which stakes a late claim for most chaotic town yet visited (Peruvian coastal towns filling the top ten up till now). Its a bit of an epic and one Al has labelled a 'make or break day'. Strangely we both make it and end up broke as the ATM's are not on the pay and Venezuela is the most expensive country we've passed through by some margin. It Al's birthday so we celebrate by finding a place that takes Visa and getting, uhm, Al to pay for it. Congratulations! This day was the sort of cycling performance that would have had the doping testers lining up round our team hotel with plastic beakers if they weren't all at the Tour de France, looking at Ricardo Ricco  suspiciously. Accordingly we start late the next day (after nine) which works in our favour. We are cycling into the coastal range of mountains north of Maturin, around the pretty town of Caripe and have a big climb called 'La Campaña' to finish the day. It is hard to imagine tackling it successfully in anything other than evening cool. It is worth it to reach fresher air and great mountain surrounds; an ideal spot to spend our last night on the road and savour the downhill to the Caribbean the following day.

The start of the climb called 'La Campaña', north of Maturin, Venezuela.

Of course, that is not what happens. What happens is that we decide to visit Venezuela's biggest cave, 6 Km on the way from our overnight stop, on the worthy scientific basis that it might have a cafe where we can get a coffee and cake. It doesn't but we go in the cave anyway which turns out to be a bit of a nightmare for idiots in cycling shoes as its the slipiest surface since Pat Sharp closed his Fun House. On leaving it has started to tank it down and our descent to the coast is carried out in a monsoon. Hold on, we haven't reached the coast. We are going back up again, quite steeply. Hmm. P'twang: Colin's chain breaks for the fourth time this morning and he looks like he's about to go over the mental edge he's been teetering on since his tyre blew out on the Maturin ring road. Only the weight of the bike prevents him what David Millar recently did when struck by the same problem in the closing stages of a Giro d'Italia stage. Throw it!! Good grief, the Caribbean looms into sight out of a cloud at last. We are running later than we expected and so we go quick, so quick that we manage to break through two road blocks (social unrest of some sort, but as I'm dressed like Michael Palin's village idiot and carrying expensive gadgetry I deem it unwise to hang around to find out if its the 'battering a ginger Teessider' sort) set up on the track out onto the Peninsula de Araya before anyone can collar us. Here one last range of hills is breached and its down a barren and ragged seafront for the 20 Km to the place we chose for journeys end: the village of Chacopata. Here there is no hotel or hostal, indeed there are no visitors at all, and all is rough and ready. We didn't miss the boat to the Isla de Margarita (where we will relax for four days before the flight home) because no boats left today at all. The wet weather we cycled through in the mountains was the tail end of a storm that passed through today. This is the information we hear from the Harbour Master who has let us sleep in his office overlooking the little bay and a sardine canning factory. A power cut meant it was hard work tracking down a cold beer, but our new pal the harbour master runs the show in this place and he was still shaking his head in disbelief at our arrival when he reappeared with cans. We cooked our last pasta meal on the floor of the 'capitania' which may seem an unlikely place for journey's end, but one which, as only we can judge, was appropriate enough. The weld done us, so well done us.

Midd