Roraima Part 1 : Path to the Summit

Between Christmas Eve and the second of January, we spent all but one night camping on some tropical beach along the Venezuelan coast or on a nearby island.  We had had our fill of R & R and were ready for some adventure.

We had previously been in contact with Selene, a friend of a friend, who lived in Maracay.  She was organizing a 6-day trek up and down Mount Roraima, way down on the Venezuelan border with Brazil and Guyana.  The mountain is a tepui (also spelled tepuy), which is how the local table mountains slash mesas slash plateaus are called.  These tables are so large and tall that several of the world's tallest waterfalls are found in this little corner of Venezuela.

And this little corner is full of tepuis, all of them of Sagan proportions in age, which makes them some of the oldest rocks on Earth.  And as the land between them eroded away, they formed little islands of rock within the savannah jungle.  And like on Hawaii or Madagascar, life on each rock island evolved in its own unique way...

So back to the story : We spent two days crossing Venezuela in buses, but most of the time we were standing in lines.  You see, in every bus station that we've entered in Venezuela, they tell us that tickets can't be purchased the day before your trip.  So if you want to catch the night bus from Ciudad Guayana to the Gran Sabana, you'd have to get in line in the morning.  So we lined up at 7h30, half an hour before the ticket vendors opened for the day.  At least two or three dozen others had arrived before us.  It was going to be close.  So we split up.  Venezuela, which has nationalized most industries, has for some reason left the chaotic bus industry to its own devices.  So you have nine bus companies all plying the same routes.  So I went off searching for another line with a high bus capacity/line length ratio.  But all the lines were long and sinuous.  And you never knew if the guy in front of you was traveling alone or bringing his brood of nine kids.  We crossed our fingers and waited.  When I was one place away from the window, Pauline came running over with a big smile, "Don't buy the tickets !  I got 'em."

And with tranquil minds, we spent the day in the city knowing we had a spot.  That night, we returned and hopped on the refrigerated bus that would finally deliver us to San Francisco, a small village 12 hours away, near the start of the trek.  Stepping off the bus, we met Tony, our Pemon guide, that Selene had independently contacted and contracted.  Most trekkers hire their guides and porters through expensive agencies and pay several times the price we did, so we were quite happy that Selene had found Tony.  We spent the day packing our sacks, awaiting the rest of the group, and visiting the village.

San Francisco is one hundred percent Pemon (the local indigenous group) and one hundred percent Seventh Day Adventist, at least in this village.  I had always thought that the SDAs were non-smoking, non-drinking vegetarian Protestants (I have since read that this is more of a recommendation than a requirement).  My first impressions included lots of meat and cigarettes and murals of Pemon gods and legends.  Recommendation : considered and rejected !  But everyone had nice matching colorful houses, provided for by the SDA church.  It seemed to me that the missionaries here are trading houses for an underwhelming acceptance of their beliefs.  Yucca Christianity.

Later that day, we met the others in the group : Selene, Angelo, Ricardo, Carlos, Maru, and Luis, all friendly and young-ish and seemingly fit. Seemingly. The next morning, we were off in a 4x4 to the start of the trek, a National Park office far from the highway.


The first day's views were great, the hike unextraordinary; there were maybe one or two short inclines during the day.  Pauline and I reached the top of the biggest hill first.  Within 20 minutes, all but one or two of the group had reached that local summit.  Tony, the guide, had still not arrived and was probably helping Selene who must have been having difficulty.  But after another 20 minutes, we realized that Tony was no fitter than Selene, who was indeed struggling.  Tony, dragging his feet and hanging his head, looked near death.  Seconds after reaching the top, Tony lit a cigarette and filled his oxygen-starved lungs with smoke.  This was going to be a long hike.  For him.

After waiting on the tops of other small hills, we decided to stop waiting for our stragglers.  We walked straight to the campsite and set up our tent.  There we waited and waited.

It was here at the first camp that we learned what the other trekkers had paid for.  Porters were everywhere, busy as the local leaf-cutter ants, unloading the leaning towers of supplies on their backs....setting up tents, cooking food, and creating exclusive toilet tents.  And one by one, the other (not out group) trekkers moseyed into camp carrying a daypack full of water and snacks and a camera and found the tents assembled, the food cooked, and the shithole dug.

Our group arrived last of all, but I shouldn't blame them; they actually had to carry their own gear. So, logically enough, they then decided that they would all get an early start in the morning.  Good idea !  We (Pauline and I) were up by six with the sun, ready to go at seven.  Most of the group was still sleeping, and those that were awake were groggy, pajama-ed and far from ready.  So we waited.  By eight o'clock, we left impatiently.  The reason for our impatience was twofold.  The Southern Venezuelan sun is brutal at midday, and we wanted to get most of hiking done before then.  Also, the campsites were generally too small for all of the tents of all of the hikers.  A late arrival meant camping far from camp or next to the toilets or worse.

As we departed, we saw Tony's head just emerging from his tent, weak as a newborn baby.  The second day's hike was much much tougher ( = better), involved two river crossing, and the views only got better.  We made good time and arrived at the new campsite below the tepui's cliffs in the early afternoon.  Most of the other groups had left by seven or earlier, and many arrived before us.  There we waited another five to six hours before we recognized any of our gang.  The good part of it all was that we met lots of other groups in those six hours.  In a sense of hiker solidarity, all the other hikers also seemed to be waiting and rooting for Tony and the others, faithfully guiding us from the rear.

This time, they said, they're going to start early in the morning.  For real.  Carlos was the only who wasn't kidding.  He was ready by seven, and the three of us began the third day of hiking, which was the shortest but toughest, 100% ascent, often requiring the hands, passing under waterfalls, across shaky bridges, and within a shoe width of a vertical cliff shrouded in fog.

But before midday, we had made it.  We were on top with James, the sunburned Englishman, eating lunch with the sun shining on our faces.  For a few minutes we were the only four to have arrived.  And the sights were all ours.

Here's part 2 of the story : The Lost World

Say the Magic Words : I'm French

Within a couple of weeks of arriving at the school (this is in December now), we were on holiday again !  And not only that, winter holiday lasts a month at this school !

We had considered visiting Panama or Trinidad or Ecuador...you see, we had two reasons for traveling outside of Colombia : the first was of course to visit a new country, the other was to get Pauline's visa.  She wasn't able to get a partner visa while we were in the States because we weren't married.  So in December the school finally offered her her own position as a bilingual (English/Spanish) assistant in the Kindergarten.

But in the end we chose to return to Venezuela.  The Colombian consulate in Maracaibo was literally across the border from our new home, and we had many friends living in Maracaibo and elsewhere in Venezuela.  Furthermore, despite spending three months in the country, there remained lots to see and do...Roraima, for example, is a table mountain in the far southeast corner of the country that was especially alluring.

We arrived in Maracaibo on the weekend.  First thing, we visited the consulate's website that insisted that we needed a reservation to apply for a visa.  Below, there was a little calendar with dates in black or red.  "Please reserve your appointment by clicking on the dates in green," read the Daltonian website.  What ?!?  After we and six other educated and computer-savvy people tried for a hour to make sense of the site and of that thoroughly unclickable calendar, we gave up and assumed that the site was still under construction and not yet functioning.

Come Monday, we were off to the consulate sans reservation.  At eight in the morning, there was a moderate line hanging out the front door, with the consulate bouncer emerging every few minutes to admit or refuse entry to an applicant, without apparent logic.  Watching and learning from the people around us in the line, we figured out that in order to get any answers you must aggressively pass in front of others and shout your query louder than the rest of the mob.  Pauline learned this lesson much better than I.  She finally convinced the bouncer to send someone out to speak with us, who informed us that we should please go home and make a reservation on the consulate website.  Yes, of course the website works.  She was as deaf to our pleas as the website was color-blind and dysfunctional.  And furthermore, they only process visas on Tuesdays and Thursday.  We slunk home, shoulders sunken.

We started recalculating our trip; instead of a few days in Maracaibo, a few weeks seemed more likely.  But we were determined, we decided to return on Tuesday, even earlier in the morning.  Our astonished yes met a line dangling from the door three times longer than the day before.  After nearly an hour, a woman came out and asked who was here for a visa.  Pauline and I and three others disengaged from various points in the line and rushed over to the woman.  "Who has an appointment," she asked ?  Uh, the applicants stared searchingly at one another, "but the website..."  This woman slowly started to believe us after hearing our desperate declarations.  Unfortunately, she was not in charge of visa applications; she ushered us inside, in the air conditioning, and told us to await the woman who would be in charge of our fates.

At nine o'clock, the moment of truth came and the group was summoned to meet Señorita Visa-Rejector in her office.  Unlike the woman before, she could not be swayed.  She knew that the website worked perfectly !  She dismissed the group with a wave of her hand.  Your visa application has been rejected, her hand told us.  And one man left, defeated.  A few minutes later, the young couple left, defeated.  Pauline would not be defeated, she persisted.

Having only Pauline to listen to, she asked a strange question, "Where are you from?"  From France, Pauline answered.  "But where do you live?"  France, she answered again...and then added the bit about us traveling in Colombia and being offered jobs and all that.

"Show me your papers," she said coolly.  We had arrived where few visa applicants had trod.  They were not worthy.  Most were stopped by the website, specially designed to weed out the weak-willed.  Then the long lines, the scorching heat, and finally the women who repeated, "no, no, no."  They were all tests.  We had passed them all.  Or maybe she was just a francophile.

Pauline showed her the documents, we paid the fee, and waited.  Within another hour, we emerged from the building, heads high.  The linear mob momentarily stopped their gesticulating and shouting, and turned their gazes upon us.  I may be mistaken, but I thought I heard the whisperings and murmurs of "They did it !" and "Look at them, they have earned the visa !" and finally "Look my son, more rare than Halley's Comet, a visa approval happens only once in a lifetime.  Savor this moment."  Then the shouting recommenced, "Hey, I've been waiting out here for hours, goddamnit !"

Flashback : Driver, Catch that Plane !

A short while back, we told the school that we'd stay for another year.  So immediately afterwards, we began planning and scheming our summer and winter holidays...and I'm happy to say that we just finished our ticket-buying.  So this summer, we're going to fly to Paris...then visit my grandmother, dad, and brother Christian in Stockholm, then head down to France again to visit Pauline's family.  This winter, we'll be in neighboring Panama where we'll meet Pauline's whole family and half of mine.  But with all these flights in the head, it reminded me of a flight a very nearly missed a few years ago.

Here's the story :

It was December 20, 2009.  My flight was to depart sometime in the afternoon on the 21st for Stockholm from Girona, a bit north of Barcelona.  I was working until 7 that night at the French-American Center.  Just before leaving, I figured it would be a good moment to check the exact time of departure.  You see, I was planning on hitchhiking, and I needed to factor in a margin of error.

So I visited Ryanair's website and searched for the flight's ETD.  I rubbed my eyes.  I refreshed the page.  Strange, it was showing that my flight's departure time was for 8h30 in the morning on the 21st...a little over 12 hours away.  Oh shit, I calmly thought to myself.  Looks like I'll have to take the train, I grumbled...that mistake's gonna cost me.

I searched the websites of France's and Spain's national lines.  Hmmm, no trains leaving Montpellier until the next morning at 6 o'clock.  And those won't even be close to arriving before the plane leaves.  Scratch that option.  Oh shit, I calmly thought to myself.  Back to plan A.

I called Pauline, "Pauline, please throw a pizza in the oven right now.  Yeah, seriously, right now, please !  I'll be home in 10 minutes and explain everything."  Eleven minutes later, I was packing my backpack with some of my warm clothes and I was wearing the rest.  Three minutes later the pizza was devoured, and I was out the door.  Pauline was shaking her head, not with disbelief, but sadly, with belief.

I took the tram to the edge of the city, then walked for 15 minutes until I arrived at the large peage, or toll plaza, for cars heading toward Barcelona and Toulouse.  It was colder than a witch's titty.  And the coldest was to come.

One of my rules for hitchhiking is that you have to be seen.  If the cap covers your hair down to your eyes, and the scarf covers your neck up to your nose, and the rest of your body is covered in coats and gloves...well, then you'll have a harder time of it.

So off with the gloves and cap and scarf, unzip the coat, and...smile.

Another rule : pity helps.  I got my teeth a-chattering and my body a-shivering.

Nine minutes later, a young film director from the Cote Azur picked me up.  He was heading toward Toulouse, not Barcelona.  Not a problem, "just please drop me off in Narbonne, where the highway forks."  He missed the exit.  Problem.  He dropped me off at a highway rest area near Carcassonne, 30 - 40 minutes too far.  We got there at about 10 o'clock.  By midnight, I had seen just three drivers enter and leave...all in the direction of Toulouse.  Zut !

At midnight, I found a kind young couple driving back toward Montpellier.  Hmmm, dilemma.  Do I return to the starting line, where I'll surely find more cars, many of which going to Spain or thereabouts.  But it'd cost me at least two hours.  I gambled on Narbonne, a much smaller, but closer peage.

After freezing my thumbs off for two hours in Narbonne, I abandoned hope and hope abandoned me.  I looked for a place to sleep...in the roundabout before the toll plaza, in the city on a park bench, in the McDonald's playplace.  But with the chill, the wind, and hard surface, I never got even close to sleep.  I returned to the peage at 4h30.  two hours passed; two cars passed by.  I was so cold.  I wanted to cry.  At 6 o'clock, a man offered to take me to Perpignan, only 30 minutes down the road, but decidedly in the direction of Barcelona.  "Yes, please !"

6h30 in Perpignan, 2 hours before my flight.  The muscles in my torso hurt from shivering all night.  The joints in my thumbs were numb from extended moments of extension.  My face froze from the cold and the forzen smile I kept.

I sent telepathic signals to each and every driver.  At 7h07 it worked.  A French bird-watcher was going to Figueres, a city north and short of my destination.  I was worried about hitchhiking in Spain, from experience I know it's harder to find a car and easier to get insults from passing drivers.  But I didn't have the luxury to say no.

Another of my rules for hitchhiking : Talk to the drivers.  Be interested in them.  Make them glad they picked you up.

I briefly told him of my plight, then I dozed.  Hard.  I woke up at 8 sharp.  I looked around through fuzzy vision.  Wait a tic...I'm at the airport !  The bird-watching gentleman took me 20 minutes out of his way (plus another 20 to get back to Figueres).  I thanked him profusely, offered to pay for his gasoline.  He was happy to help, and I was happy to make my flight.  It was about at this time, I remembered that I had missed my birthday.  I was 30 years old.