A mix of travel tips, history, music and fine food as I explore Venezuela in the footsteps of the great German scientist and adventurer Alexander von Humboldt.
Russell Maddicks, the author of the Bradt Guide to Venezuela will highlight some of the most fascinating areas of Venezuela to visit and what you can expect to see and do. Drawing on his experience of adventuring in Venezuela for more than 20 years, Russell will take you to:
* The “Lost World” mountain of Roraima and the unique ecosystem of its summit
* The unique thunderless lightning phenomenon in the south of Lake Maracaibo known as Catatumbo Lightning
* The magical mountain of Sorte where devotees of Maria Lionza practice a syncretic religion unique to the country
* The record-breaking and awe-inspiring waterfall of Angel Falls, known as Kerepacupai-meru to the local Pemon people.
One of the 17 most megadiverse countries in the world, Venezuela is home to Caribbean beaches, dense rainforests, high Andean valleys, mysterious table-top tepui mountains, and seasonally-flooded plains that are literally teeming with birds, beasts and creepy-crawlies.
Venezuela is also alive with the sound of folk music, from the Afro-Venezuelan tambores of the coast, to the harp-driven Joropo songs of Los Llanos and during his talk Russell will present several examples of the music to be found in the regions he discusses.
Rona Cant — Just do it – become the best you can be!
Once an unexceptional, single parent she took part in the BT Global Challenge Round the World Yacht Race (the toughest yacht race in the world); two days later she embarked on the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island (one of the world’s toughest), encountering bears and cougars. Rona helped organise and was on The Nordkapp Expedition, dogsledding in the Arctic Circle to the northernmost tip of Europe, a trail thought to be impossible.
Rona tells how she has achieved her goals using stories from her childhood, her marriage, how she entered into a life of adventure, her diverse adventures and what she has accomplished.
London meetings of the Globetrotters Club are held at 2.15 p.m. at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden (WC2B 5EZ).
Admission: Members £3.00 - Non-members £6.00
Tickets are not sold in advance. Entry is payable on the door on a first come first served basis. For more information call (+44) 0207 193 2586 or use the Globetrotters online contact form.
Click on photo to expand. Catatumbo Lightning image courtesy of Alan Highton.
Exploring Venezuela: A Land of Natural Wonders in Words, Sounds and Pictures
In this illustrated talk, Russell Maddicks, the author of the Bradt Guide to Venezuela will highlight some of the most fascinating areas of Venezuela to visit and what you can expect to see and do.
Drawing on his experience of adventuring in Venezuela for more than 20 years, the author will take you to:
* The "Lost World" mountain of Roraima and the unique ecosystem of its summit
* The thunderless lightning phenomenon in the south of Lake Maracaibo known as Catatumbo Lightning
* The magical mountain of Sorte where devotees of Maria Lionza practice a syncretic religion unique to the country
* The record-breaking and awe-inspiring waterfall of Angel Falls, known as Kerepacupai-meru to the local Pemon people.
One of the 17 most megadiverse countries in the world, Venezuela is home to Caribbean beaches, dense rainforests, high Andean valleys, mysterious table-top tepui mountains, and seasonally-flooded plains that are literally teeming with birds, beasts and creepy-crawlies.
From the anacondas, capybaras and crocodiles of Los Llanos, to the jaguars, monkeys and tarantulas of the jungle, a well-planned trip to this fascinating country can reap rich rewards for wildlife watchers.
Venezuela is also alive with the sound of folk music, from the Afro-Venezuelan tambores of the coast, to the harp-driven Joropo songs of Los Llanos and during his talk the author will present several examples of the music to be found in the regions he discusses.
There will be a live group performing traditional folk music, an opportunity to sample some of Venezuela's excellent local rum and Gillian Howe of Geodyssey - a tailor-made travel company specializing in organized trips to Venezuela - will be on hand to offer her own expert tips and advice on travelling in Venezuela.
Venue: Bolivar Hall, the Venezuelan cultural centre in London, 54 Grafton Way, London, W1T 5DL Nearest Tube: Warren Street Doors open: 7:15 p.m. Date: 7 July
The latest tourism campaign in Venezuela tries to widen the scope from the usual Margarita, Merida and Angel Falls combination to take in some of the other top destinations in the country.
It's a great way to get a quick overview of the country and the subtitles in English give a fairly good description of the places featured.
British TV naturalist David Attenborough climbs Venezuela's Mount Roraima to get up close and personal with some of the freaky carnivorous plants that live up there.
Could you survive on Venezuela's remote Mount Roraima if you were flown to the top of the mountain by helicopter with a group of strangers and a few supplies?
That was the challenge set on US reality show "Out of the Wild", produced by the Discovery Channel.
Basically, nine ordinary US citizens were taken to the border between Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana and helicoptered to the top of Roraima with the aim of getting off the famous table-top mountain, known as a tepui in the language of the local Pemon tribe, and making their way back to civilization.
The show is not like "Survivor" or "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here", nobody was voted off by the public, but anybody could leave at any time if the challenge got too tough for them by activating a button on their GPS devices.
The lack of food, damp conditions and gruelling 70-mile hike down the mountain, across the savannah and through dense jungle put even the toughest participants to the test.
US Army Captain Nick Albini, a combat veteran, lost almost 30 pounds during the nearly three weeks it took to complete the trial.
He said afterwards, that it was a much tougher adventure than he had ever dreamed:
"I ate bugs for eight days straight without eating any meat - insects, worms, grasshoppers, spiders, grubworms, scorpions..."
Veteran travel journalist Ryan Van Duzer was also put to the test, calling his time in Venezuela "the most difficult mental and physical challenge of my life," although he said he enjoyed "stretching my limits... to the max."
Thanks to Dharmender Singh Tathgur the Bradt Guide to Venezuela is on the move. This is a shot of the book in front of the imposing tepui Roraima taken from the stoney banks of the Rio Kukenan.
Dharmender's next stop is the highest waterfall in the world, Angel Falls - or Kerepakupai-Meru in the language of the local Pemon people. Let's hope he gets some shots to rival the spectacular cover photo of the falls.
This photo shows the Bradt Guide to Venezuela in the Pemon village of Paraitepuy, the starting and finishing point for treks to the top of Roraima. Keep sending the photos. It's so great to see the book being used to get people safely round Venezuela.
While taking part in a meet-the-author event for the Bradt Guide to Venezuela at Destinations Holiday and Travel Show in Earl's Court, London, on 5 February, I met Gillian Howe of travel firm Geodyssey, the UK's top holiday company specializing in trips to Venezuela.
Destinations was a great opportunity to meet and greet travellers planning trips to Venezuela, sign a few guide book and give out tips on where to go and what to see.
Showing off the new guide with Adrian Phillips, Bradt publishing director and guidebook author, at the Bradt book stall at the Adventure Travel Live show in London.
This Sunday, 30 January, from 15:00 till 15:45, I'll be giving a talk about travelling in Venezuela at the Adventure Travel Live tourism fair at the Royal Horticultural Halls in Victoria London. The event brings together all the major adventure travel companies, guidebook publishers and specialist magazines for a three-day bonanza aimed at publicizing off-the-beaten track destinations, specialist wildlife destinations and once-in-a-lifetime travel experiences. This is a great opportunity for me to promote Venezuela as a travel destination, especially Los Llanos, Catatumbo, Angel Falls, Mount Roraima, Los Roques and cool places like Choroni. It's also the perfect venue to talk about my new book - The Bradt Guide to Venezuela. Here's the description of the talk from the Adventure Travel Live website:
Venezuela: Wildlife Wonderland - Russell Maddicks
One of the 17 most megadiverse countries in the world, Venezuela, perched at the top of South America, is hot, tropical and home to Caribbean beaches, dense rainforests, high Andean valleys, mysterious table-top tepui mountains, and seasonally-flooded plains that are literally teeming with birds, beasts and creepy-crawlies.
From the anacondas, capybaras and crocodiles of Los Llanos, to the jaguars, monkeys and tarantulas of the jungle, a well-planned trip to this fascinating country can reap rich rewards for wildlife watchers. In this talk, Russell Maddicks, who has been adventuring in Venezuela for more than 20 years, will highlight the main wildlife areas to visit and what you can expect to see. He will also give practical tips on how to minimize your impact on these fragile environments, travel responsibly, and give something back to the local communities you stay with.
Special advance price:
Adults: £6. Under 16s free.Order online at adventuretravellive.com or call 0871 230 7159 and quote “PV4”.
On door price:
Adults: £10. Under 16s free.
Show opening times:
Friday 28 January 6pm to 9pm
Saturday 29 January 10am to 6pm
Sunday 30 January 10am to 5pm
As cinemas across the USA prepare to show Pixar-Disney's new 3D adventure movie UP - set in and around Angel Falls and the majestic tepui mountains of Venezuela's Canaima National Park - gamers can look forward to "Up: The Video Game" by THQ, which takes grumpy septuagenarian Carl Fredricksen and his young sidekick Russell on a series of further misadventures through the "undiscovered jungles of South America".
All the characters from the movie appear, including Dug the speaking dog and the villainous Muntz, who has spent years trying to track down a living specimen of the prehistoric bird that Russell finds and nicknames "Kevin".
The aim of the game is for Carl, Russell and Dug to work together to navigate treacherous jungles and rugged tepui mountains, battle exotic beasts like anacondas and crocodiles and stop Muntz from getting his hands on Kevin.
The game is released in a range of formats, including Wii, Xbox, Nintendo DS, Playstation 3 and Windows Vista/XP.
Watching the clip, it looks almost as exciting as climbing tepuis like Roraima and Auyantepui for real, but without the downsides like itchy mosquito bites, drenching tropical downpours, getting lost in dense mist and spending shivering nights in a leaky tent.
Venezuela makes it onto the big screen this May as Pixar's latest animated characters explore the mysterious tepui mountains of the Gran Sabana in the comedy movie "Up".
The movie is billed as "a 3-D tale about a grumpy old man who ties balloons to his house and floats away with it to the South American jungle."
Some insider sources have suggested that "Up" is a loose adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes classic novel "Don Quixote", but it's more like the Wizard of Oz.
The story revolves around a curmudgeonly old balloon salesman called Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), a 78-year-old widower who promised his late wife Ellie that he would take her away to "Paradise Falls", the most beautiful and awe-inspiring waterfall in South America (based on Venezuela's Angel Falls).
When developers threaten to move him into an old people's home, he decides to fulfill his promise to Ellie and embarks on a barmy plan to explore the globe in his own house.
However, after tying 10,000 ballons to his home and sailing up into the sky he gets a nasty shock when he finds an 8-year-old Wilderness Ranger called Russell stowed away on his front porch.
A report in Entertainment Weekly quotes co-director Pete Docter - who directed Monster Inc. - saying the Pixar team initially considered a desert island for Carl and Russell's destination but finally settled on Venezuela's majestic tabletop mountains after visiting the highest waterfall in the world Angel Falls and climbing a tepui called Mount Roraima.
This area in the far south of Venezuela near the borders with Brazil and Guyana is known as "The Lost World" after a 1912 adventure novel of the same name by Arthur Conan Doyle - the creator of Sherlock Holmes - which tells the tale of a group of British explorers who climb a tepui only to find deadly dinosaurs and terrifying pterodactyls inhabiting its summit.
Conan Doyle based his imaginary Lost World on descriptions of Mount Roraima by the first people to climb it, Everard Im Thurn and Harry I. Perkins, who were on an 1884 expedition to conquer the mountain sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society.
Im Thurn described the summit of the flat-topped mountain as having "wildly extraordinary scenery" and "rocks and pinnacles of extraordinary shapes; seeming to defy every law of gravity!"
Anybody who's ever been to the summit of Roraima will instantly understand Im Thurn's wonder at the ancient black rocks of the summit and the strange shapes they have been worn into by eons of erosion by the rain.
The explorer marveled at "rocks ridiculous at every point with countless apparent caricatures of the faces and forms of men and animals, apparent caricatures of umbrellas, tortoises, churches, cannons and of innumerable other incongruous and unexpected objects."
The Pixar team have done an incredible job of recreating the strange summit of Roraima in Up.
To make sure they got the feel of such an otherwordly place, the director Pete Docter and 11 Pixar artists climbed Roraima in 2004.
"We hiked up to the top of the mountain and stayed there for three nights, painting and sketching," Docter says, adding "it was great" and "everybody made it out alive."
In another interview he described Venezuela's Lost World of tepui mountains as "a fantastic, weird place" with the "oldest rock on earth".
Ronnie Del Carmen, a story artist who worked on the film, writes on his blog that visiting Roraima was "the grand daddy of all research trips. Easily the most adventurous, rigorous trip I've ever been involved in (and I've been in a few. They are a walk in the park by comparison)."
According to del Carmen there was "danger at every turn: snakes, falling off cliffs, lethal bugs, spelunking under a crumbling cave ceiling... you know, fun."
"Up!" will be the first Pixar film to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D.
It is also the first animated feature to ever kick off the prestigious Cannes film festival - after it shared the limelight on 13 May with Quentin Tarantino's movie "Inglourious Basterds" and Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus" - Heath Ledger's last movie.
From Disney*Pixar comes "Up", a comedy adventure about 78-year-old balloon salesman Carl Fredericksen, who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America.
But he discovers all too late that his biggest nightmare has stowed away on the trip: an overly optimistic 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell.
'Up' takes audiences on a thrilling journey where the unlikely pair encounter wild terrain, unexpected villains and jungle creatures.
From the Academy Award-nominated director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.), Disney*Pixar's "Up" invites you on a hilarious journey into a lost world, with the least likely duo on Earth.
Up will be presented in Disney Digital 3-D in select theatres.
Newsflash! The results are in and Angel Falls is one of the 28 finalists vying to become one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature. Read about it here:
After the success of the 7 New Wonders of the World campaign in 2007, the organizers have now launched a similar internet search for the Seven Wonders of Nature and Venezuela's Angel Falls could be one of them - if enough people vote for it.
Back in 2007 more than 100 million people from all over the world cast votes for hundreds of architechural gems.
The final seven Wonders of the World were Machu Picchu in Peru, the Pyramid of Chichen Itza in Mexico, Christ the Redeemer in Rio, Brazil, the Colosseum, in Rome, Italy, the Great Wall of China, the ancient city of Petra in Jordan, and the Taj Mahal in India.
This time it's all about natural treasures and, apart from Angel Falls, Venezuela has seven other candidates, including the Los Roques Archipelago, Auyantepui Mountain, Mount Roraima, Pico Bolivar, Sarisarinama Mountain, the Guacharo Cave, the Gran Sabana and Canaima National Park.
The voting system is simple, you just have to visit this page and introduce your email and a few details that they promise will not be used for any purposes apart from the voting.
Basically, every vote counts, so please get in there and give the Venezuelan candidates some votes.
Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world, has a good chance of making it into the final 21 if we all mobilize our friends and families to make their votes count.
On 29 September, Angel Falls was 29th on the the live ranking list of the 77 top candidates, with Asia dominating all the spots in the top 10. That's a pretty cool result, considering that Mount Everest is at number 12.
And there's a long way still to go.
Voting for the nominees will continue through to 31 December 2008, when the candidates will be whittled down to one per country, with only the top candidate from each country being allowed to proceed.
Then on 7 July, 2009 the New7Wonders of Nature panel led by Professor Federico Mayor, former Director-General of UNESCO, will review the top 77 nominees and choose 28 finalists, to be announced on 21 July 2009.
Those 28 finalists will then be put to the popular vote.
But before that it's important that the Venezuelan entries get official support. Angel Falls has support from a sponsoring body in Venezuela but it has not been officially recognized yet.
Meanwhile, Iguazu Falls has the full backing of Brazil and Argentina.
Rather ominously, a note on the new7Wonders website for Angel Falls says that unless the issue of sponsorship is resolved Angel Falls "will be eliminated from the finalist section".
But don't despair. Get voting. And lets get all the Venezuelan entries high on that top 77 list, where they deserve to be.
