Vamos A La Playa

The trip from Caracas to Choroni took three stages: first a short metro ride, followed by 90 minutes on bus to Maracay and then completed with a thrilling two and a half hour roller coaster of a drive though the beautiful scenery and high jungle mountains of "Parque Nacional Henri Pittier" which seperate Caracas from the Caribbean Sea. The last part of the trip was done at high speed in an old pimped up American schoolbus with latin rhythms booming out of the sound system. When I reached Choroni and the fishermen's part of town "Puerto Colombia" I quickly learned the meaning of "Todo Ocupado" as every hostel or posada (guesthouse) had this sign up due to it still being Christmas holidays here. Wandering around the picturesque and colourful town I saw the two first blonde guys I'd seen since leaving Sweden, I went up to them on a hunch and of course they were Swedish. They were brothers Eric and Gustaf, here on holiday with their parents and Eric's girlfriend Jeanette, who like Eric studies at Caracas University. I spoke to the friendly owner at their posada called Monita, and managed to get a bed in her childhood room/storage unit. I spent two nights and one day with the family from the south of Sweden visiting a nearby beach and the tiny idyllic town of Chuao which produces some of the world's finest cocoa. During the evenings we had great food and drinks. It was nice to meet people and be able to have my first real conversations of... this decade basically. I spent one day alone in Choroni and decided to check the crowded but pretty Playa Grande out before taking the crazy ride across the mountains again, via Maracay and Valencia to reach Chichiriviche after 8 hours. Chichiriviche is another coastal-town, this one located in the Parque Nacional de Morrocoy, which is famous for its tropical paradise cayos (keys) I visited Cayo Varadero, which was also crowded, but if you just walked a few minutes in either direction you had miles of white sand beach, palmtrees and crystal clear turquoise water all to yourself. Unfortunately recycling doesn't seem to be very high up on Señor Chavez's agenda, as most beaches I've seen so far have been cluttered with litter. As my second day in Chichiriviche was cloudy I decided not to visit any more cayos but instead move on towards new destinations, where that will be only time can tell... ok it's going to be a town called Coro.