Last day in Los Roques

Los Roques, Venezuela (Dec 12, 2004)

The last day in Los Roques we decided to take it easy. We went to the nearest island (Madrisqui) and stayed there for the morning (we had to go back in Gran Roque by 5PM to catch the airplane to Caracas). We spent the morning resting on the beach (very similar to the one above, all white coral sand), and listening to the conversation of our neighbours in the beach. They were a middle aged couple accompanied by a local, who talked all the time about his active role in the local opposition party. In the end I didn’t have very clear if he was sincere in his tirade or was just faking for the sake of his employer, as we know that during the 2002 coup, when the president Chavez was prisoner in a nearby island (la Orchila) the fishermen of Los Roques organized an expedition to free him (he was freed by his captors before they could actually carry on their plans).

In the afternoon we went for our last snorkeling dive for this year. On the backside of the island there is a nice coral reef, which is however difficult to reach from the beach. What we did was to enter in the water from the beach and then swim our way to the reef. Unfortunately there was some “agua mala” (urticant algae) so we had to clear the initial part of the dive quite fast. When we finally reached the reef we didn’t want to go back the same way, so we just swam all around the reef to the other side of the island where we managed to find our way between the corals (not an easy operation due to the shallow waters). The full dive was quite tiresome, but a good ending for our vacation, as we managed to see a lot of new fishes, even though the corals were quite ruined (I believe by some storms a few years before.

We made it just in time for the boat that was getting us, run to the posada for a very fast shower, and then to the airfield to catch the plane back to Caracas. Last note of the day: in the Caracas airport we met one of the uncountable cousins of Mayli and her spanish fiancee, in transit to Puerto de la Cruz (east of Venezuela) to visit her sister.

Go to the next installment of my Venezuela travel diary.