Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones--Andrew Thomas of The Sunday Times beats vampire bats, killer snakes and roaring rapids to reach a lost city in Venezuela
Times Online June 01, 2003
I admit I was sceptical. Sitting in a Venezuelan tour agency in the town of Merida, I was being offered a trip to visit a lost city. In 2003, I told myself, nothing is lost any more. Type “lost” into an internet search engine and it brings up 56,520,849 results — “lost” found almost 57 million times.
Yet here I was being promised the ruins of El Porvenir via an adventure worthy of Indiana Jones. Hesitant about signing up there and then, I went to an internet cafe to look the place up. “‘El Porvenir ruins’ did not match any documents,” came the reply. Scepticism turned to incredulity: if Google couldn’t find it, how the hell would I? Deep in the Venezuelan Andes, Merida is to South America what Queenstown is to Australasia — the adventure-sports capital of a continent. And, as with its Antipodean counterpart, it’s the town’s topography that makes Merida so suited to the adrenaline boom. Stretched along the Chama Valley, it is hemmed in by mountains of patchwork greens and gushing streams. In this environment, if a sport can be conceived, it can be achieved.
For weather, though, Merida beats Queenstown hands down. Year-round sun, 70F temperatures and light April showers in any month you choose mean that, in Merida, it is always spring, and the surroundings leave little excuse to get weather- bored: half an hour up the valley, it is deepest midwinter; half an hour down, the height of summer. From a paraglider high above town, I could see all three.
As I swooped and soared — a cruising eagle to the left, a pair of black vultures below — I contemplated. I’d come to Venezuela to play at adventure sports; what I’d been offered was a sniff of real-life adventure — a chance, perhaps, to help unearth the next Machu Picchu or Tikal. It seemed too good to be true, and as my feet touched down, I knew I had to investigate further.
By the time I returned to the agency, the promise of such a trip had stirred the curiosity of others far more expert than I. As well as a small knot of tourists, a Spanish naturalist and anthropologist, a British geologist and the author of a guidebook on Venezuela would be joining our expedition.
In a beaten-up 4WD with mountain bikes on the roof, we set off south. Within 35 minutes we’d hit summer, and an arid landscape of cactuses and lizards far removed from the greenery of Merida. Then on and up again, along impossible roads lined with mini chapels to indicate where others had taken corners faster than we did. Near Tovar, our vehicle hit a bright-green parrot snake. “Semi- poisonous!” exclaimed the naturalist with glee — Richter 6 on the snake scale.
On and up, summer back into spring. The mountains of this most westerly part of Venezuela are tiered with coffee — the best in the world, if our guide was to be believed. International commodity markets don’t agree, however. Colombian coffee fetches far more than Venezuelan, and much of what I was seeing would be sneaked across the border and sold as Colombian.
At Guaraque, a small town 3,000 metres above sea level, the cycles came down and the adrenaline shot up. Mountain bikes weren’t meant for the cycle paths of Bristol or Bath; here in the Andes, they could ride free.
Down the sides of the stunning Rio Negro Valley, we covered 19km in two hours. In an environment like this — above the tree line and through verdant forest, past cascading waterfalls and brake-inducing views — biking is comparable only with skiing. The track we were following would have been graded red, with occasional hands-free blue and trickier sections of black. Best of all, though, were the opportunities to go off-piste, on steep tracks barely wider than the bikes, with precarious drops on one side.
Dusty and sweaty, but as elated as it’s possible to be without snow, we emerged beside an innocuous-looking cave. Venturing in, it became clear that this was the sort of cave that made cavernous an adjective. Deeper and deeper we stumbled, often on hands and knees, through tunnels and over piles of clay rocks, penetrating chamber upon chamber. We heard them before we saw them. Bats.
It was a little pile of thickened, puréed blood that got our naturalist excited, and gave them away. Only one animal eats and excretes blood, he exclaimed: the vampire bat. They didn’t take long to make their presence felt, and within minutes, it was as if the walls themselves were squeaking. Once our eyes became adjusted to the dark, we could see them: small bats clinging to giant rocks; big bats hanging upside down from low ceilings. As they sensed us drawing closer, they swooped down around us.
We spent the night in a camp once used by Italian managers on a dam-building scheme. The “ruins” of El Porvenir, along with an axe and clay pots, were originally unearthed in the late 1970s by workers preparing to build a hydroelectricity plant. They were suspected to be the remnants of a 16th-century Chibcha settlement, but locals claim the discovery was hushed up for fear of derailing the engineering project.
Then, in the mid-1980s, with the dam no closer to sign-off, a Venezuelan archeologist was brought in to compile a report — the yellowing pages of which we pored over as the eve of discovery wore on. Nothing happened for another 15 years, but now, with the dam project all but dead, visitors are being invited in, which it’s hoped may kick-start an archeological dig. One group had visited a month or so earlier. Otherwise, we were pioneers.
THERE IS something about exploration that demands the ultimate find be made without motorised transport. So it was that we found ourselves rafting down the Rio Doradas, dark skies and growls of angry thunder accompanying our passage through the jungle.
“Right back, right back,” shouted our guide, as white- water rapids buffeted the boat from rock to hard place and threatened to tip one of us overboard. We clung on, and two hours in, turned and paddled up a narrow creek until only our feet could take us further.
For a further hour we trekked, and it struck me that we came much less well equipped than the giant ants that marched in columns at our feet. There they were — ordered, efficient and totally at home in the jungle. Our exploratory party was less organised, far from home, dwarfed by fallen leaves. And, far from marching, I was all but skipping, such was my excitement at what lay ahead.
I’ll be honest: I wouldn’t know an important ancient ruin if it had a flashing neon sign and a queuing system. So when we came across The Find, it was to the experts I turned. In front of us, washed by the clear water of the creek of El Porvenir, was something very unusual.
“It’s certainly something very unusual,” said the geologist.
At a 45-degree angle, and perhaps 15 metres square, a collection of what looked like neatly arranged stone slabs stretched up and into the undergrowth.
“They look like slabs,” said the anthropologist, “stretching into the undergrowth.”
Unusual? Slabs? It sounded promising, yet disappointment was etched onto every face. Even the guidebook-writer — who stood to sell a lot more copies if Venezuela could be shown to have serious history — looked downbeat.
“The thing is,” said the geo-logist, “I’m not at all sure this isn’t natural. It’s unusual, but over millions of years, unusual things happen in nature.”
Natural! Having been sceptical two days earlier, I was now desperate to be persuaded that this was a big find. And while we’d certainly found something, its being natural was not part of my plan.
Here I was, in the middle of the Venezuelan jungle, either standing in the heart of an important lost city or knee-deep in water next to an unusual rock. As we scratched around further, the evidence tended to the latter.
Only time — and more experts — will tell whether “El Porvenir” and “ruins” are words that will ever sit together on Google. But lost city or no lost city, I’d found something much bigger and better. This whole western part of Venezuela is a lost land — at least in the sense that it hasn’t been found by any tourists.
In our three-day trip out of Merida, our group hadn’t encountered any other. We’d biked down Andean paths, rafted a virgin river and explored Batman’s cave without meeting any other jokers. And when you’ve discovered a whole new country, a lost city is mere detail.
Andrew Thomas travelled as a guest of British Airways and Arassari Trek
TRAVEL BRIEF
Getting there: the only direct flights from the UK or Ireland to Caracas are with British Airways (0845 773 3377, www.ba.com) from Heathrow; from £479. Travelselect (0871 222 3213, www.travelselect.co.uk) has flights from Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester and other regional airports with Lufthansa via Frankfurt; from £408. Or try Virgin Travelstore (0870 066 4477, www.virgintravelstore.com) or Ebookers (0870 010 7000, www.ebookers.com). In Ireland, Gohop.com (01 241 2389, www.gohop.com) has flights from Dublin to Caracas with KLM via Amsterdam; from ?771. Avior Airlines (00 58-212 202 5811, www.avior.com.ve) flies from Caracas to Merida; about £60 return.
Where to stay: Merida’s Hotel Prado Rio (Avenida Universidad, 274 252 0633; doubles £25) has a pool. Or try the attractive Posada La Montaña (Calle 24 6-47, 274 252 5977; £15).
Tour operators: Last Fron-tiers (01296 653000, www.lastfrontiers.com) can tailor-make itineraries in Venezuela. A 15-day trip, with one night in Caracas, three in Merida, two in Los Frailes, three in Los Llanos and four at the beach in the Mochima National Park, starts at £1,935pp, including flights from Heathrow, most meals, all transfers and some car hire; UK regional add-on flights start at £100pp. Or try Exodus (020 8675 5550, www.exodus.co.uk), Geodyssey (020 7281 7788, www.geodyssey.co.uk) or Journey Latin America (020 8747 8315, www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk).
“Lost city” adventure: Arassari Trek (00 58 274 252 5879, www.arassari.com) is the only agency in Merida offering the three-day trip to the “lost city”. It costs £80pp, including activities, food and simple accommodation.
Other activities: in Merida, you can go paragliding (£30; www.andesflycenter.com), canyoning (£20), white-water rafting (£60 for two days) and horse-riding (£15).
Further information: call the Venezuelan embassy (020 7584 4206; 9am-1pm).