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The Lost world and Jurassic Park.

LA GRAN SABANA, V.E. (AP) There are only three of us in the Piper Air Plane- the pilot, my husband and me. From the co-pilot's seat, I can't help noticing that the cockpit dials are held together with parcel tape and the needles on the fuel gauges are all on empty. A tattered image of the Virgin Mary is glued to the altimeter.

With no preamble or safety drill, we rattle along the dirt runway and lurch into the air, jerking as if bumping up a flight of stairs, and then tipping as we wheel over the scattered remains of a crashed plane, and head out across the bleached grass of the Gran Sabana.

A cool breeze blows through gaping holes in the fuselage. Outside the window, the plane's wheels remind me of my lawnmower, and the tyres have no tread. Both compasses are jammed at north, even though we are flying south-east. "No worry," shouts the pilot, "very new engine inside."

For a few minutes, I can hear my heart beating with alarm above the roar of the very-new-engine, but soon I am transfixed by the views and forget my fear. The savannah stretches to infinity in all directions - a gently undulating, mottled carpet of faded green, ochre, khaki and beige, with occasional swathes of darker tropical forest. Sunlit clearings are littered with matchstick-thin tree trunks, slashed by local Indians.

We soar over a wide, brick-red river, and cross smaller tributaries that meander in tight loops through the forest and swirl out across the plain.

Lines of moriche palms mark the course of underground streams. Pale webs of narrow footpaths link clusters of palm-thatched mud huts. The lichen-coloured highlands are dotted with plumes of smoke, curling into the hazy sky. Pemón Indians burn the savannah to trap meat - two weeks later, juicy new shoots will attract tapirs, armadillos and deer.

After an hour, we reach the tepuys, astonishing rocky remnants of the time - two billion years ago - when South America, Africa and Australia were joined. Isolated millions of years ago from the surrounding plain, the mist-shrouded summits of these table-mountains are home to unique forms of life.

This is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World. The author never saw Venezuela's Gran Sabana, but he listened to travellers' tales of this wild and desolate spot, and described it with uncanny accuracy.

We have flown over his "irregular palm-studded plain", where, in its "damper hollows, Mauritia palms threw out their graceful drooping fronds", and seen his "brooks with pebbly bottoms and fern-draped banks gurgling down the shallow gorges in the hill." And here is his "line of high red cliffs", ancient outcrops on whose summits Jurassic flora and fauna have survived.

We land on a bumpy airstrip at Santa Elena, a small mining town near the Brazilian border, where our guide awaits us. It is reassuring to have Julio with us - at road blocks, he speaks deferentially to the armed teenage soldiers as they moodily check our passports, rip open our luggage, and inscribe our names in dog-eared ledgers.

Julio is also glad to have us, because with tourists in his car he can avoid a four-hour queue for petrol. President Chavez has fixed the price of petrol at a generous 2p per litre, much cheaper than in Brazil, so hundreds of people make a good living by buying petrol in Santa Elena and selling it across the border on the black market.

Soldiers wielding rifles supervise mile-long queues of dilapidated vehicles - locals in one line and Brazilians in another - and collect unofficial "taxes". Many of the pick-up trucks have been fitted with huge (illegal) tanks to maximise earnings.

Santa Elena is a jostling, ramshackle frontier town, with open-fronted shops selling hardware and food, extended families lounging on doorsteps, tousle-headed prospectors swigging beer, and a mission church with an unusual wooden roof, carved by an architect who apparently seduced all Santa Elena's maidens before being drummed out of town.

Julio is full of stories. At a riverbank scarred with illegal gold and diamond open-cast mines, we hear about a local, called Barrabas, who found the world's largest diamond and sold it for millions of dollars, only to die as poor as he began. Julio explains cheerfully that miners who find gold often kill team-mates to increase their share of the haul. Then they spend their earnings on drink.

The Gran Sabana is as beautiful from the ground as it is from the air - utterly silent and still, an immense, empty, sepia-tinted vista scattered with wisps of pale smoke.

In the distance, the craggy tepuys loom, including Roraima, the highest and most famous, home of Conan Doyle's terrifying dinosaurs. We are attacked by smaller but equally unwelcome beasts - puri-puri gnats.

Our legs are soon covered in red welts, which itch for days. Julio drives us to Quebrada de Jaspe, an orangey-red riverbed of pure jasper - a radiant, shimmering palace floor overhung with tangled primary forest. We crouch under a waterfall for some bracing hydrotherapy, and then tiptoe over the slippery slabs. The semi-precious stone still bears the marks of British prospectors who supplied luxury bathrooms until 1972, when the area became a national park.

Next, Julio practises his off-road driving skills to reach Arapena Meru, a frothy cascade of inky, tannin-stained water, known locally as Coca-Cola falls. Crested caracaras and vultures wheel overhead in a hot blue sky.

At midday, we reach Woy Meru, a waterfall linking two palm-fringed pools, where we swim and wallow, and have more head-and-shoulder massages under the cascade. We lunch on beef, plantain and yucca in a palm-thatched cabana.

Only Indians are permitted to live in the vast Canaima National Park, whose 7.5 million acres make it one of the largest parks in the world.

A new surfaced road linking Venezuela to Brazil has brought relative prosperity to villagers who live near it.

On the way back to Santa Elena, we stop at some half-built stalls, buy a palm-woven basket, and then stroll with Julio through a straggling village. Beside each new, government-issue concrete bungalow, we see families sitting in the shade of traditional, open-sided mud huts thatched with shaggy palm-fronds. Julio explains that the new corrugated-iron roofs are too hot and stuffy.

Children scamper out to wave at us, but not everyone in the village welcomes strangers - suddenly we are engulfed in smoke. An old woman has lit the grass outside her house to purify the air, and banish our bad magic.

Back on the Tarmac road, we pass ancient villagers, bent double under baskets of dusty manioc. At a river, brightly coloured clothes are spread on rocks to dry. We pick up four park rangers - locals who work as conservationists and fire-fighters, trying to educate their peers against burning grass near their homes.

After two days, we take to the air again, soaring over a bobbly green mantle of forest spiked with tall palms, sacred Ceiba trees, and unexpected patches of pink blossom. There are more than a hundred tepuys, some isolated, others separated by deep canyons. Waterfalls slice down sheer cliffs in sparkling ribbons. We skim over craggy summits, deeply fissured with pinnacles and fairytale battlements, or dotted with patches of coarse grass - Conan Doyle's "beautiful fringe of verdure".

Finally, we circle over a dramatic labyrinth of gorges, and our pilot points out Angel Falls, the world's tallest waterfall - a slender thread of water, plunging for half a mile before dissolving into a cloud of vapour. Moments later, we reach Canaima, a tiny settlement on a lagoon, with a row of fat, foaming waterfalls, surrounded by tangled forest.

The next morning, we wake in time to see the sun rise beyond the waterfalls. We swim in the silky saponin-dark lake, fringed with freshwater mangroves, moriche palms and dense jungle.

There are no roads to Canaima and the sense of peace is intense. We loll in palm-fibre hammocks, soothed by the roar of the falls and caressed by cool spray that wafts across the lake. Macaws and toucans, in unlikely, gaudy colours, strut past our veranda. Monkeys chuckle from a large cage.

At dusk, we stroll along a beach of soft, pink sand and watch village children splash in the terracotta-coloured shallows. Mothers, sitting at the water's edge, pause from their laundry to gaze out across the inky ripples of the lagoon. As darkness falls, fireflies flash from the jungle, frogs croak, macaws screech, cicadas chirp, bats swoop and the inky sky is covered with stars. And the waterfalls thunder on. .

expedition.travel

Merida an unknown destination in the Andes

MERIDA (AP) - I left the city on an early morning flight, taking off into a rosy dawn, and an hour later we were coming down into the Andes.

Mérida lay perched at 5,000ft on a semi-tropical meseta, flanked by two rivers. The airport was in the very centre of town, a postage stamp of runway surrounded by roads and houses. Outside, the air was cool and mountain-sweet, a world away from the sweltering temperatures of the coast.

Two mountain ranges, the Sierra Nevada and the Sierra La Culata, run like shoulder blades through this northern reach of the Andean cordillera. While their peaks are cloaked in snow, their lower slopes are carpeted with rainforest and dotted with fields of coffee, wheat and potatoes. From Mérida, the world's highest and longest cable car runs up to Pico Espejo, just under 15,650ft. This being Venezuela, however, only three of the four sections are working.

Picking up my hire car proved a complicated business. A young woman made a phone call to the capital to confirm my booking. Was there a problem? No, there was no problem - but I must wait. Meanwhile, she checked the car for dents and scratches, ticking them off painstakingly on a clipboard. Then she made another phone call. Still I must wait. But there was no problem, she assured me.

Finally, she took off the car's hub-caps and popped them into the boot for safekeeping - before making yet another phone call. It was about this time that I realised that she had no authority whatsoever, but her American training and Latin politeness obliged her to keep up appearances. Good manners in the face of bureaucratic impotence: a common sight in Latin America.

Mérida is a modern university town, with a few colonial-style buildings and a cathedral begun in 1800. On dusty streets, fast-food outlets jostled with cafes whose ancient Gaggia machines dispensed cups of high-octane coffee known as pequeñas. Beaten-up Por Puesto minibuses pumped out clouds of exhaust fumes; music thumped from doorways. There were election banners hanging from windows, and cars with loudspeakers playing tinny campaign songs.

In the countryside it was another story. My base lay 15 miles out of town at La Mesa de los Indios, an Amerindian village of dusty streets and sun-bleached houses, silent in the afternoon heat, untroubled by campaign banners or rhetoric. At the centre was a leafy plaza with a white-painted church and the inevitable statue of Bolivar; several elderly American cars were parked in the shade.

Outside the Posada Papa Miguel, an old Indian man with a blank expression sat squinting in the doorway. The posada's proprietor, Arminda, was an Indian woman with tight dark curls, a lovely smile and three daughters, Rocio, Rocire and Rocimar, who stood arranged in descending order like a welcoming committee of angels. They showed me to my room, overlooking a courtyard hung with flowers.

Arminda cooked a meal of Pisca Andina soup flavoured with coriander, and poured glasses of Anis del Mono, a clear licorice drink that spreads out from the stomach in a warm glow. We gossiped about village life and politics.

Arminda would be voting in the presidential election, but doubted that many villagers would join her. Only two things traditionally mattered to the Andean peasant, Arminda insisted: religion and alcohol. La Politica, like the capital itself, belonged to another world.

Next morning I headed for the Sierra Nevada National Park, passing neat little Indian villages with donkeys in the fields and the tangy smell of woodsmoke rising up in acrid gusts. Pick-ups rumbled along, the men in the back waving lazily as I overtook. At about 8,000ft the vegetation began to thin out and the landscape lost its cultivated look, and became increasingly barren.

This was the p?ramo, the highland moor that separates the rainforest from the high Andean peaks. It was an undulating expanse of green and brown hills, dotted with wild flowers. Lupins, chicory and the red "Spanish flag" brought little splashes of colour to the denuded landscape.

By the time I reached the national park gate at 11,000ft, I was feeling the altitude. The thin air and harsh sunlight of the Andes wear you down quickly. I set off on the walk down to the Laguna Negra - the Black Lake - breathing deeply and taking small steps. It took an hour to reach the lake, a punchbowl of black against the cloudswept hills. I stared around in awe.

The journey from Caracas had taken me from modern city to traditional village, to a place on the roof of the world where the presence of humans is largely irrelevant. Pasar el P?ramo, literally "to cross the P?ramo", is also a local expression for dying.

Back in Mérida it was Friday night, and the town was buzzing. At a local restaurant I ate chicken with garlicky mashed potatoes, and fell in with a group of students who heard me talking English to the proprietor and invited me over. We set off on a tour of the bars, ending up in La Taverna, a lively place with graffiti-covered walls and three televisions showing three different channels.

The students were drinking Solar beer with rum chasers, and shouting to make themselves heard. Venezuelans are noisy, flamboyant talkers, given to extravagant gestures. And - another paradox - their national pride is tempered by self-irony. Stefano, a politics student in his 20s, told a typical joke: when God created Venezuela, He blessed her with beautiful mountains, gold and oil. When another Latin American country objected to these advantages as unfair, God demurred. "Huh," He said, "you should have seen the people I put there . . ."

It was Stefano who took me along to see the presidential candidate the next day. "Irene", as she is known to all, is not an unlikely politician for Venezuela. In a country that sets such store by image, beauty contests are a legitimate step on the career ladder. Caracas has many beauty academies for aspiring hopefuls. It is also a centre for cosmetic surgery - about which Stefano had another joke. When Venezuelan beauty queens die, he said, they give their bodies back to medical science.

Irene herself is in her prime. Her appeal is to youth and idealism, and the noise as her private jet touched down was deafening. As the candidate emerged into the sunlight several teenagers near me were in tears of joy. I caught sight of the girl from the hire-car office, waving and smiling. There was something very moving about the passion Venezuelans bring to public life. Even the superficialities of politics are underpinned by real emotion.

This rubs off on strangers. As the candidate pressed through the throng of people, buffeted this way and that, but still smiling, it suddenly became important to take part rather then just watch. With a heave I pushed my way past a security guard and leaned forward. Whoever wins tomorrow's election, Irene will know that she went into the contest with the good wishes of this visitor firmly behind her.

Merida.travel

The most vicious creatures on Earth.

BBC. VE. -- The Llanos plains of Venezuela cover an area of nearly a quarter of a million square miles, stretching from Bolivia in the south to the Orinoco Delta in the north. Vast, flat, empty save for 12 million cattle and abundant wildlife, in the rainy season the Llanos flood and turn into a gigantic marshland. And among the many freshwater fish perfectly adapted to this singular environment is the piranha.
 

It was, however, a fascinating journey. In the fields all around stood scores of capybaras. These brown furry animals, found only in South and Central America, are the biggest rodents in the world - and yet they could be mistaken for some giant and extraordinarily cuddly version of a guinea pig. They stood at the side of the road - or quite often in it - watching the car, their soft snouts raised to sniff the air, big eyes blinking. They formed a pleasant welcoming committee after the long journey.

Hato El Cedral is a working ranch of 55,000 hectares. A dozen or so comfortable bungalows were grouped under trees around a central swimming pool and ranch-house. The only other residents were a few vaqueros (cowboys) - most of the cattle were grazing elsewhere - and the kitchen staff. The Llanos is the least-visited area of Venezuela, and Llaneros, people elsewhere in Venezuela will tell you, are somewhat dour types.

There was nothing dour about life at Hato El Cedral. At dinner the radio blasted out local joropo music with harps and guitars. Solid country food - as often as not industrial-size slabs of beef - appeared on the table. A black-clad cook fussed and chivvied her serving girls; the vaqueros entered, gave polite buenas noches, removed their hats and sat at another table. The slightly cracked but nice Juanito, someone's middle-aged relative, wrestled with his corkscrew and usually managed to open the requested bottle of wine a few moments before the end of the meal. At 9.30 the tables were cleared and the ranch turned in for the night.

In the days, we explored by boat, skimming across the flooded plains in an aluminium skiff. The birdlife on the river was astounding, with more than 300 species. In one early evening sojourn I spotted red-breasted fly-eaters among the reeds, an eagle hovering overhead, and herons and egrets in the trees.

We also went fishing for piranha. This is not as difficult as it seems: piranhas will take almost anything off a hook. We baited up with scraps of meat, dangled lines over the side, and suddenly the water was swirling with movement. The piranha's fierce reputation is not exaggerated. They are quite possibly the most vicious creature on the planet. Those we pulled out locked their jaws on anything they could, including, if you were not careful, your fingers. The small ones we threw back were instantly devoured by their former mates.

Piranha meat, incidentally, is full of bones, which makes soup the best way to eat it.

In this idyllic way, three days passed. On the last night we brought the boat back at sunset accompanied by bird calls and screeches, a wispy orange sunset, and lightning forking behind the clouds off to the east. That night we turned in earlier than usual for the next day's journey - from the bottom to the top of the world.

The first stage was by taxi to the town of Barinas, a few hours away. The taxi was an ancient Ford with plush imitation velvet seats like armchairs, and a wraparound sound system so deafening that Mrs Mansfield, in the back seat, had to don a set of earplugs to avoid aural injury. The driver adjusted his sunglasses, grunted, and set off down the empty roads like a bullet. By now the sun had broken through and you could feel the heat building up. Soon the inside of the taxi was like an oven.

Barinas is a cattle town, a flat grid of scorching streets; prosperous, modern and functional. At the airport, middle-aged ladies with heavy make-up and chunky gold jewellery were catching flights back to Caracas while their husbands remained at work on the ranch.

We collected our hire car and headed out of town, to where the jagged purple outline of the Andes rose like a stage set. From here, the only way to go was up.

The road climbed steadily up through a damp rainforest. Wild orchids stood at the roadside, as did a disturbing number of wooden crosses, marking the scenes of fatal accidents. By now we had dispensed with the car's air-conditioning and wound down the windows. Mist filled the valleys, which slowly became more bare, until they resembled part of Wales or Scotland, even down to the dry-stone walls.

Now we were running across the edge of a deep ravine, emerald green in colour, with a waterfall to one side and a river snaking through the valley below. We reached a plateau, where potatoes and wheat were being farmed in strips. A horseman came clattering down the street; overladen pick-ups crawled slowly up the hill spouting exhaust fumes. Time to wind up the windows and switch on the heater.

Finally the road levelled at about 10,000ft. The view all around was dazzling. This was the páramo, or high steppes of the Andes, a place of denuded brown rock, scree and snow-streaked mountain peaks, with clear, sharp air and dazzling sunlight. Wild flowers and mountain heather added colour to the bare landscape. To have come from sweltering savannah to this high place in the space of just a few hours seemed hardly possible.

The mood of unreality was exacerbated at the Hotel Los Frailes. This simple white building, with its wooden verandahs and high bell tower, was once a monastery - a plaque on the wall is inscribed with the date 1643. Now it is one of the most remote and atmospheric hotels in the world.

First, though, you have to check in. We advanced up the staircase to reception out of breath and sweating. At this altitude, moving slowly and breathing deeply are vital. Inside was a tiled courtyard with greenery, stone fountains and guest rooms with terracotta roofs.

Ours had stone floors, a double-bed with brass bedstead, and dark wood fittings rich with the smell of polish. The ancient central heating came on and the pipes chugged and creaked all night.

There were about a dozen guests in this lovely little hotel; the majority of them weekending caraqueños. I spotted one shy honeymoon couple holding hands, and indeed, there can be few more romantic places to stay anywhere in the world. As night came down the temperature dropped towards freezing, and we repaired to the leather sofas and log fire of the bar. Los Frailes had a peculiarly agreeable hybrid feel: a cross between Alpine ski resort, country house hotel, Latin American posada and hunting lodge. The barman brought cannelitas - an apéritif of fortified wine laced with cinnamon - and added logs to the fire.

In the dining-room, formally dressed waiters hovered at the tables. It was immediately apparent that dinner at Los Frailes was going to be a long, drawn-out affair - and that most of the time would be spent ordering. We studied the lengthy menu, made our choice, which the waiter duly took down, laboriously checking each detail. He then returned minutes later to report that several items were unavailable.

The whole process was then repeated. Then repeated again. . .

But what with the smell of woodsmoke and the warm log fire; the glimpses of the mountains outside, and the inner glow provided by a second cannelita, it was impossible to grow impatient. In the end we ate well, on soup, chicken and fresh fish. This time the fish was fresh out of the stream running through the courtyard: and not an ugly little piranha, but a delicious, bone-free, user-friendly fillet of trout.

Expedition.travel

Caracas is a great city for most travelers. It is nonetheless one of the more cosmopolitan cities in Latin America, with vibrant business, social, and cultural scenes. Architecturally, Caracas is one of the most modern and distinctive cities in Latin America. Concrete and plate glass reign supreme, much of it showing the bold forms and sleek lines of the Art Deco and postmodern architectural currents of the last half of the 20th century. Aficionados will enjoy works of Carlos Raúl Villanueva, a local architect who often integrated into his designs large kinetic sculptures by such renowned figures as Alexander Calder and Jesús Soto.

Caracas, and the international airport in Maiquetía, is the de hub for travel around Venezuela. If you plan on visiting several destinations in the country, you will be passing through Caracas as part of your itinerary. You can easily get a good feel for the city and its major attractions in a couple of days.

Simón Bolívar, El Libertador

The great hero of Latin American independence, Simón Bolívar, was born in Caracas on July 24, 1783, into a criolla family of the city's commercial cacao elite. The second of four children, young Simón lost both parents by the time he was 9 years old. Raised by an uncle and schooled in private schools in both Venezuela and Europe, Bolívar was well-educated and erudite. In 1802, while in Europe, he met and married María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro, a Spanish aristocrat. However, Maria Teresa died of yellow fever just a few months later, soon after the couple's return to Venezuela. Despondent, Bolívar sought solace in travel.

His travels following the death of his wife brought him into direct contact with the leaders and results of both the French and American revolutions. In Europe, he also met famed scientist and explorer Alexander von Humbolt, who further sowed the seeds of Bolívar's revolutionary work. Humbolt allegedly told Bolívar that South America was ripe for freedom but lacked a charismatic leader to lead the struggle.

Upon his return to Venezuela, Bolívar began political opposition to Spanish rule and, soon after that, armed struggle. By 1812, he had taken over the Venezuelan independence movement and spent most of the next 20 years in armed combat. Bolívar mounted a series of impressive long-range campaigns against Spain that are still admired and studied. He ultimately liberated the area comprising modern-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. However, his dream of a united "Gran Colombia" never took hold, and Bolívar himself fell quickly out of political favor following the defeat of the Spanish.

Bolívar may have set the model for military men seizing, Hotels...