Far From The Carnival Crowds
Last year I remained in my home town of Maturin to experience Carnaval in all its colourful glory; but this year I deliberately missed the party & headed, instead, for the Orinoco Delta.
Waranoko Jungle Camp, Orinoco Delta, Venezuela Right now, most of Venezuela has only one thing on its mind: Carnaval. In every town & village, people are out on the streets drinking, dancing, & drenching one another with bucketfuls of water. The music is loud; food & beer kiosks have sprouted everywhere; normal traffic is diverted to make way for gaudy carnival floats & costumed merrymakers; men dressed as devils enact strange dramas, as excited children & pretty señoritas look on. This annual explosion of joie de vivre starts on a Saturday & finishes the following Tuesday. Last year I remained in my home town of Maturin to experience Carnaval in all its colourful glory ; but this year I deliberately missed the party & headed, instead, for the Orinoco Delta. If you look at a map of Venezuela, the mouth of the River Orinoco is impressively vast: its many fingers cover an enormous area as they stretch out into the Atlantic Ocean towards Trinidad. Today is Sunday ; I am writing this letter in a remote jungle camp on the banks of one of the many rivers, or caños, that comprise the Delta system. Getting here was easy : I took a por puesto (shared taxi) from Maturin to the little town of Tucupita, which is the starting-point for Orinoco trips ; from there I travelled by motor launch to Waranoko camp. The river journey was amazing. For 5 hours we snaked our leisurely way between the mangroves, stopping once for lunch (at the comparatively luxurious Guamal Camp), once for gasoline (supplied by the Warao Indians, whose home this is), once to buy Warao craft items (I bought a balsa-wood toucan & a beautifully woven fruit bowl) & many times to observe the birds & animals. The region is a natural paradise. Huge turquoise butterflies flap lazily by; blue & yellow macaws scream overhead ; prehistoric-looking hoatzins fly off panic-stricken as the boat approaches. On one occasion our boatman stopped & pointed at what looked like bright red flowers in the trees ahead. Suddenly the flowers began to move; then they were air-borne. My first scarlet ibises! Another memorable sight was the pink dolphins, which never go out to sea but permanently inhabit the fresh waters of the Orinoco. The river is a deep brown, so these creatures are only visible when they breach the surface. Meeting the Warao Indians was fascinating. Many of them speak no Spanish, only their Warao native tongue. They are a boat people who live in wooden open-sided houses raised on poles out of the water. There are wooden walkways, also on poles, connecting the houses. The Warao are self-sufficient - fishing, hunting & baking bread - but, to make a little money, they sell baskets, hammocks & balsa carvings to the tourists. When we stopped for gasoline, I noticed an animal skin stretched out on the logs of a walkway. I asked in Spanish what it was. "Tigre," came the reply. I discovered that this was a jaguar which had been killed for its skin & teeth. The teeth had magical properties & would be worn as amulets. The skin was being dried & would eventually be sold to tourists. Waranoko Camp, where I am sitting now at 8pm, is splendidly basic. Everything is home-made; everything is wooden. In the Delta there is no such thing as a rock or a pebble or sand - only mud, silt & trees. The main building is constructed from mangrove wood ; the roof is thatched with palm leaves. The hammocks that we sleep in were woven by the Warao Indians from the fibres of the moriche palm tree. This camp, because of its remoteness, does not attract the tourist hordes from Margarita Island. They stay at Guamal Camp, which is 1½ hours from the Tucupita airstrip. Apart from myself there are only two other tourists here: Gerard, a laid-back South African geologist who works in Caracas ; & Melisa, a polyglot Argentine who cares passionately about nature. The camp is staffed by a couple of locals & by Charlie from neighbouring Guyana. Charlie is as laid-back & friendly as they come. English is his first language. His trousers are full of holes & his arms are crudely tattooed. He arrived here from Guyana 14 years ago & has never gone back - not even to visit his relatives. He says he likes the tranquillity of the jungle. We talked about cricket &, like all good Guyanans, he had heard of Clive Lloyd & Gary Sobers. Then I asked him a quiz question: which Venezuelan state shares its name with a famous current West Indian cricketer? Charlie hadn't a clue. He perused the map of Venezuela hanging on the wall but still couldn't say. I gave him the answer: Lara (Brian Lara is the current West Indian kingpin, & Lara state is to the west of Caracas). Charlie knew the old cricketers but was blissfully ignorant of anything that had happened in the 14 years since his arrival in the Delta. Tonight we may go out to see alligators. But it is so pleasant just sitting by the water's edge - watching the stars, listening to the jungle noises, sipping a cuba libre - that I will probably stay here. One blessed feature of this camp is the absence of mosquitoes. Nobody knows why, but there aren't any. I will sleep tonight in my hammock without a mosquito net. This is quite different from Guamal Camp, where mosquitoes abound & mosquito netting is essential. Tomorrow I travel back to 'civilisation' & the excitement of Carnaval. But for now, I will savour the stillness & beauty of this pristine place in the heart of the Orinoco Delta. Kevin Mulqueen 5/3/2000