Banner made with Canva
Hello friends! @soyunasantacruz tagged my in her post for this initiative and at first I didn't think I could come up with the pictures for a post like this. However, after going through some albums I found some cool pictures of a trip we made around 2002. It was the second big family trip. The first was a tour to Mérida State (Venezuela). But I don't know where those photos are. So, I found some of our family vacation to La Gran Sabana.
La Gran Sabana is region form Canaima National Park located in Bolivar State in the southeastern region of Venezuela known as Guayana. It has an area of 10,820 square kilometers. This area isn't only in Venezuela but extends to Brazil and part of Guyana. It's famous for several reasons. It has beautiful landscape, several gorges, rivers and waterfalls and plateaus (known as tepui). The vegetation and fauna has been subject to several studies form scientific as the ecosystem is reach in exotic species.
Our trip to this place came by a tour. Tours were a very popular thing during the late 90s and early 2000s in Venezuela. It was a way to travel around the country with a guide and share with other people from different States. After por first one on Merida, my parents wanted to go south to La Gran Sabana, which is still one of the most visited destinations in the country (even though now it's quite expensive).
I'll start the tour with the photos of some old photos I found in the albums.
This rock is one of the oldest in the world. It is called The Virgin Rock ( La Piedra Virgen ) since till that date no one had been able to chip it away. This is the first milestone of the trip. It's the staring of Canaima National Park.
Through be told, I don't remember many things about these vacations. The landscapes are in my mind, but it wasn't like a lot happened. What I remember about it, it's the time it took us to get there. It was hours and hours in the bus. At some point, I remember we had to walk to get to another bus since there was blockade on a bridge. Added to that, it was the first time I ever saw wildfires. Those are common in the area during the middle of the year since the temperature gets high enough to ignite the dry weeds.
A relevant fact of the trip is that it was the first time my brother and I went out of the country. Part of the tour included a pass to The Line, which is a frontier town located in Brazil. I remember not understanding a thing of the mix of Portuguese and Spanish people speak there.
There's a lot for water around the place. I remember this beautiful rocks from this river that gets to something called " Quebrada de Jaspe . It is wild to see rock that's blood- colored with some black features. We didn't stay much time there since the natives warned us about snakes coming out at nightfall. So there's was an added danger factor.
Some of the things we couldn't do was going all the way to Angel Falls. This is because the road is not advisable for small children. As it takes days to reach the base camp of Auyantepui (the plateau that holds this waterfall). And a lot of this trip is made of boats over the river to native camps in the wilderness.
However, I remember that before we went to the National Park we made a stop at El Callao which is a mining town from Bolivar State and we had the chance to go down into a mine shaft.
As an uneventful vacations, this was really nice. It was back in the times when the socialist regine had not squeezed the life out of the country's economy. And one could get to do stuff like this on each vacation. Watching this photos reminds me of those times. We used to travel a lot. We made a lot of these family trips to everywhere in Venezuela. And I'm fond of this memories. Traveling let's you explore new cultures and learning about other places gives you a different perspective about your hometown.
I have to add a crazy anecdote about this trip. When we arrive to Santa Elena de Guairen, the las Venezuelan town near the frontier with Brazil in Bolivar State, we were served some nuggets of something that tasted like chicken. Later we found out we had eaten snake nuggets. This didn't surprise us too much as we had been eating weird stuff on the road, venison, alligator (babas as their are called around here).
When we look back on these days, we have a laugh. Nowadays the family isn't all together as my brother lives abroad. But this family memories will be with us forever.
Another big point about these trips was the idea of coming together with other people form different parts of the country. Sharing experiences and ways of life made the whole idea of traveling more of a family trip than it should be. It is the warmth of the words and gestures of kindness among people who are just knowing each other. The solidarity of Venezuelan in a nutshell. More like rinding on some wheels. That has made each tour I have taken a heartwarming experience that pops from time to time in mind and always cracks a smile on my face.
I think @rlathulerie would like to take part on this initiative.
Follow me on Instagram for enquires and commission.
If you'd like to help the workshop grow, you can make a donation here. You can find me at discord as bertrayo#1763
