The Delta

I survived the jungle. We woke up early, 3 am. Piled into the car with our gear, half asleep. Stopped for some arepas at a truck stop as the sun rose. We arrived at the river at noon and met the group coming back from a 10-day excursion into the delta. All of them looked like they had a serious case of measles, from head to toe. One girl was in her bathing suit bottoms rubbing anti itch cream all over her legs and her butt. Mosquitoes, they warned us. They are evil. Don’t go to the bathroom after sundown. They will eat you alive.

Off to a great start I’d say. Luckily, we were promised that this was not an area for disease.

The Orinoco Delta is home to the Warao natives, which literally means "people of the canoe." They live in little wooden, wall-less huts on the riverbanks. There furniture consists of a few hammocks and a TV, which is a pretty interesting combination. All of their mobility is done in little wooden dugout canoes. They give birth in the canoe, hunt, travel, and eventually are set out into the delta in their canoes when they die. Jakera is the Warao word for peace and love.

Jakera everyone.

So four of us, Ivan, Louis (our Warao guide), Gato (some kid from Venezuela), and little me set out into the delta in our brightly colored, well stalked Kayaks.

We slept in hammocks, saw hundreds of monkeys, parrots, some really big river otters, we had an iguana almost fly down onto Ivan’s head, swam with piranhas, chased snakes, ran into a gigantic spider, were covered with millions (im not exaggerating) of mosquitoes, saw glowing butterflies at night, huge blue ones during the day, bats flying inches from your face, scorpion look out, were woken at 4am to howler monkey growls, paddling down the river in intense down-pour, listening to crazy animal noises at night... AMAZING, amazing. I want to go back to do a 10 day trip.

Here is a little more info on this area: http://www.orinocodelta.com/f_delta.htm#img2



This is a posada in the Warao Village. Our take off point.


Our trusty vessels.