Catatumbo

On Friday,  I took my last field trip with my Ecology class.  We went to El Paramo de Piedras Blancas.  This is the top of the mountains.  I did not suck at altitude this time! I was honestly surprised.  This is a picture of me not dying of altitude:

(alive)

We didn't stay that long because the teacher was already sick and didn't like altitude either, so I couldn't even gloat that much on how much I wasn't being affected.  But we did get some cool pictures and we did the biggest part of our work.

When we got back, I had a huge headache, so I went to bed early.

On Saturday I got up early and went to Catatumbo.  Catatumbo is famous because it is on the giant Lake Maracaibo, and has a constant lightning storm every night.  It is the only place in the world that does this.  So I arrived at the pick-up place, and we stuffed eight people and their stuff in the back of this Jeep, and we left. First we stopped this waterfall.  Then we stopped at Jaji, which is just a small little town once famous for the largest coffee plantations in the country.  The difference between this place and Merida was stark.  It was quiet. It was calm. It was pretty in one of those small town ways.  We then went to an old coffee plantation.  They had animals, and especially a lovable St. Bernard, that we all had lots of fun with...

After this, we stopped by the Pirate's Cave.  This is a stretch of caves that the Spaniards used as jails to oppress the indigenous people that lived there.  We had to have a guide because it was very easy to get lost in there.  And the flashlight they gave me kept going at the worst intervals.

After this, we stopped at another waterfall.

We then got something to eat and left for the final stretch of the journey.  We arrived in the small town on the lake around 5 or 6 in the evening, which means it was almost dark.  We took a boat out to where we would stay - a hut in the middle of the lake.  Not on some island, but poles stuck into the bed of the lake supporting it.  We ate dinner and went for a night swim in the warm water.  We sat out waiting for the lightning to start.  We saw some lightning, but then got really tired and went to sleep.  But then, later on in the night, we were woken by the sky lighting up like a strobe light.  It was amazing.

(This is a horrible picture, but we saw howler monkeys in the trees)

We spent the night in hammocks.  In the morning, we went on a boat tour of the lake and went swimming again.  I had the most amazing luck to have my camera battery die and then have my camera fall into the water within the same 10 minute period.  It works. Kind of.  I can take pictures and look at pictures. But that is it.  No video, no settings changes, no flash settings.  So I put it in a bowl of rice when I got back, and am leaving it in there all day.  Maybe having dried out will make it normal again.  At least I can still take pictures.  But here are some that I got before that wonderful incident.

And then I got back and found out my internet hadn't worked all weekend and it still wasn't working this morning.  So I am camped at school getting as much work as I can done in order to make use of the internet  I have.  But it was an awesome weekend.