My left ankle is twice as thick as the right one, but
otherwise I am chomping at the bit for a start. Coffee at 8 and by 9 am we set
in search for the driver and vehicle that will take us and all our stuff to the
starting point. Wait, where is all the stuff? Even though we are a small
expeditionary force we are still going to need tents, sleeping bags, a kitchen,
and food for four people for 6 days. Ah, it all becomes clear now. The hardware
might be ready, but without my infusion of cash Luis had no other choice but to
wait until the last minute to make the necessary purchases.
He had made arrangements with his subcontractors, however,
and one of them was our driver. But he was flakey and didn’t show up as
expected, so we had to go to his house and distract him from his marital
duties. Half an hour later he came out, with the family on tow, and we all
piled in a bigger version of the Toyota Land Cruiser (just in case I forget to
mention it later, let me point out that Cubans are not the only ones who manage
to keep vehicles running on shoestrings and bubble gum), heading for La Línea. We had to make a stop along
the way to buy gasoline in a farm, but we only got 12 liters (more about this
later). Once at La Línea, Luis pulled
out a shopping list the length of my arm,
ripped it in three to share with his dad and a friend, and all went out
intent on accomplishing their individual missions as quickly as possible. In
the meantime I loafed around and bought a bottle of mosquito repellent and a
small pocket knife.
I should point out that the border follows a low ridge of
hills called the Pacaraima Ridge, probably named after the town, which like
Ciudad Juarez I suspect has lived from border commerce ever since Venezuela and
Brazil became nations. This ridge is also the natural boundary of the fertile
hills and valleys of Brazil, and the deceivingly green but unfertile Gran Sabana of southern Venezuela. I
will tell you about the Gran Sabana
in just a moment.
Without further a do we went back to Santa Elena, dumped the
missus and kids in the center of town, and went back to the Eco Camp to load
our gear and get started.
But first we had to deal with the problem of gasoline. It
turns out that gasoline is dirt cheap in Venezuela (about the only thing
everybody can afford), which attracts Brazilian drivers, and their Reales. To
profit from this market, clever Venezuelans are always on the look for the
gasoline tanker truck, with hundreds of vehicles parked on all streets near the
gas station, and as soon as the tanker truck arrives they swarm to the pumps
with canisters of all sizes and promptly buy all the gasoline. The normal
person, say a Brazilian from Pacaraima or a guide like Luis, do not have time
to wait for the arrival of the next tanker truck, so instead they comb the
neighborhood looking for someone who might be willing to sell them gasoline (at
exorbitant prices). I would have thought our driving subcontractor could have
taken care of this the day before. I don’t trust this guy.
We finally got on our way, for the 100 kilometer ride across
the Gran Sabana to our trailhead. The
sabana looks like the Serengeti Plain, minus the giraffes and lions. In fact,
minus animals of any type. It is a region of gentle hills underlain by a thick
residual clay soil where most plants don’t grow very well. The one exception
being a tough grass that forms big clumps and is reported to cause the soil to
be acid. I was surprised at the lack of cattle (we saw exactly one herd), goats
(again one herd), sheep, horses, and particularly donkeys. Here folks hoof it
under heavy burdens, whereas in the rest of the world a farmer happily walks
behind his heavily-loaded donkey. If I were here I would invest in a few heads
of the above-mentioned animals and give it a go.
After 50 km we left the paved road, and undertook another 50
km traverse along the most miserable dirt road I have ever seen. As I have
already mentioned, there are thick residual soils, lateritic in some cases, all
over the place. Some landforms you can recognize as being a small mesa underlain
by sedimentary rocks, but as the road cuts through them all you see is the
thick, ochre, plastic clay. The ruts in these soils reach gigantic proportions,
and the preferred way to avoid such badly eroded portions of the road is to
open a new track in the sabana. Thank God it was not raining. I cannot imagine
what this would look like under heavy rain.
Eventually we made it to the Pemón indian-community of
Paraitepuy, which will be the starting point of our adventure. Luis reminded
the driver to come pick us up on July 3, whose whole “talk-to-the-hand”
demeanor worried me a bit. I thought the guy was a flake, so I too tried to
impress on him the importance of pickup on July 3 if I were to make my
connection on the way back home. “Yeah, yeah, I will be here.”
We had an early dinner, and stayed chatting until the full
moon came up over the sabana. I took the serenely illuminated landscape as a
good omen.
No comments:
Post a Comment