Los Roques to London City

OK, it's a broad title, but then it's been quite a while and now we're back home in London after lots of adventures in Venezuela, and Mexico for that matter.

So after a prolonged period in Cumana we finally made our way West and ended up slap bang in the centre of Caracas, the city we'd vowed never to visit! However a reasonably swift taxi ride took us out of the city and through the mountains to the sprawling town of Caita la Mar where we stayed the night before heading out to Los Roques. We were booked to stay at La Parada hotel, but they are crafty and ship you off to some hotel right on the industrial docks when they are over-full - nice. Explore we did not, though I did manage to get a ride to a Bodega to pick up a couple of bottles of wine for our up and coming romantic dinners!

At 6am we were already at the airport as we had to pass by the Mexicana airlines office to pay for the first leg of our journey home before catching our 8.30 flight to Los Roques. After much arduous and painstaking investigation (while in Brazil) we thought that we had found the cheapest and basically the only way to get back home from Mexico without requiring further Visas for Leah, and the extra $1100 (US) cost to our budget would be painful but livable with. Unfortunately we were in for a nasty surprise as due to a communication breakdown on the behalf of Mexicana, the price quoted when we reserved the ticket was no longer available and instead we were slammed with over $2000 (US) worth of airfares and taxes! Of course our protests, tears, reasoning and pleading fell on deaf ears, "computa says no", and with no time left to try and explore a cheaper option we handed over my credit card and left to find our Los Roques flight feeling thoroughly cheated.

So with that rather nasty taste in our mouths we left the international terminal and headed to the domestic one to catch the short flight over to Los Roques, which, being described as Venezuela's most beautiful Caribbean destination, we hoped would cheer us up somewhat! And indeed as we began to spy the white sands, clear waters and sun soaked islands from the plane window the stresses of the morning ebbed away and our smiles returned.

From Los Roques

On Los Roques we spent our time either sitting by or paddling around in the beautiful water, snorkeling and generally taking it very very easy, conscious as we were that these would be our last few days on our wonderful adventure through Argentina, Brasil and Venezuela. We were looked after wonderfully by Dona Carmen and her crew, and the ever helpful Libia appeared as if by magic whenever we needed advice on a tour or had a boat to book. I think I'll let the photos do the talking for the time being...

From Los Roques

The journey home was long and pretty arduous, especially as Leah was basically taken to a secure area for 9 hours in Mexico, where she had to ask for an escort even to visit the bathroom! Fortunately I was both allowed to stay there with her and leave to go and find us food - I'm sure she'll be writing more on that when she gets around to blogging. Now we're back in London and feeling pretty shell shocked, but enjoying seeing our friends again and trying to decide which stories to bore them with first...