20,000 Miles

A quick update on the last two months. I reached my one year date in Venezuela and have started the countdown to Buenos Aires. Time seems to fly when you're having fun. My one year anniversary here has brought me to the end of my first consular tour and a rotation to the Political section. The last several weeks have been spent wrapping up my ongoing projects as a consular officer, interspersed by two trips, one quick and the other not. First, I took a quick weekend trip out the the Orinoco Delta, on the very Eastern edge of Venezuela. This is an enormous area of waterways and channels where the Orinoco river empties out into the Atlantic Ocean. There are no roads and little population except for a group of Wayuu Indians. We jumped on a short flight to Maturin where we met up with a driver who took us the a small town on the banks of a Delta waterway. There we took a small boat for about an hour into the heart of the Delta, stopping to view birds and plants along the way. We stayed at a jungle lodge, essentially in a swamp. There, our guide took us on short tours, fishing for piranha, walking through the jungle hunting for coconuts, drinking water from vines, and chopping down a palm tree to have a heart of palm snack.
A few weeks later, I decided to take a real vacation. For ten days, I made a jaunt from Caracas to Sao Paulo, where I stayed a few days, then jetted across the Atlantic on a non-stop flight to South Africa.

Sao Paulo is not an attractive city. It can property be described as a concrete jungle. Nonetheless, what is lacks in aesthetics, it makes up for in character. The city is chock full of bars and restaurants, one could spend every night eating and drinking through the city.

In Sao Paulo, I met up with two friends and as a group, made our way to the airport for our flight to South Africa. The flight was only 9 hours, a direct shot straight across the ocean. Upon arrival in Johannesburg, we transferred to a domestic fight and went to the border of Mozambique, were our safari guide picked us up. About an hour alter, we were at our safari lodge. For the next three days, we went on two daily game rides, one at 6AM, the other 4PM. During the three hour game rides, we would drive around the wilderness in a modified jeep with a driver and a spotter seated on the hood of the vehicle. As we explored, the spotter would call out different animals as he found them. The goal is to see the Big 5, i.e. Lion, Leopard, Giraffe, Buffalo, and Elephant. During the course of the trip, we saw all five and much more.

After, we went back to Johannesburg for a night, then made our way to Cape Town. In Cape Town, we did a city tour, went to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for nearly 20 years, and did a tour around the Cape of Good Hope, the most southernly point of Africa.

The trip was great!

When I got back to Caracas (sans part of my luggage, which was lost by the airline for week before it made it way back to Venezuela), I cleared out my desk in the consular section and moved it over to the Political section where I will be for the next year. The work is a 180 degree change from the consular section, but that discussion will be for my next post.

Pictures are of penguins in Cape Town, view from Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town, Sao Paulo, a sugar cane plantation near Caracas, and the damage left by a violent protest group that attacked the Embassy sign protesting US action in Libya.

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