Tucacas (August 21-24, 2006)

The bus arrived in Valencia around 10am and we looked for a bus to Tucacas. After asking around we eventually found them but then we had to wait until it was full before it would leave, about ½ hour. As we neared the coast we started smelling the salty air and soon the beaches and big palm trees were in sight. We arrived in Tucacas around 1pm, in the heat of the middle of the day. We were looking for the Posada Amigos del Mar, which is run by the dive shop of the same name. A tout found us and told us he would bring us to the Amigos del Mar dive shop because there was nobody at the hostel at the moment. It turned out that the dive shop was totally at the other end of the main street and we were drenched in sweat after walking all that way with our bags. At the dive shop, the guy called the posada so we could ask if there was a room (there was someone there in the end), and then we had to walk all the way back again because the posada was close to the bus stop! Argh! We tried to flag down a couple of taxis but neither of them would stop for us for some reason. We were really sweaty by the time we go to the posada. We were disappointed in the room – it was very grungy, the beds squeaked very loudly (there was only one room with two single beds available), the fan was really dusty and scary, the bathroom hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, and there were no towel racks or hooks to hang things on. The owners were very weird and looked like throwbacks from the hippie era (they were Belgian, but that isn’t what made them weird). Their house was disgustingly dirty with books and clothes spread out all over the place. We didn’t get a very good feeling at this place.

After showering in the cold water (except for in Mérida, where the temperature is cooler, none of the hotels we have stayed at in Venezuela have had hot water) and changing into shorts and sandals, we wandered around the town looking for another posada. We also went to the other dive shop, Submatur, to ask about their dive trips. We were immediately more impressed with the professionalism of this shop compared to Amigos del Mar, which was a tiny little hole in the wall with an unfriendly attendant. We also liked the owner of Submatur, a Guyanese man named Mike who had been living in Venezuela for 50 years and has been diving since the 70’s. We liked listening to him recount some of his old diving stories and he spoke very good English. We signed up to do two dives with him tomorrow. He recommended a couple of posadas for us to check out, so we went off in search of them.

The first one we went to was very nice, called El Ancla (the anchor), and run by a friendly older couple. They wanted us to pay for three nights upfront though, and we didn’t have that much money on us at the time. They were charging a surprising amount as well, considering the rooms had shared bathrooms and showers. We checked out another place around the corner; their room was the same price (70,000) and had a private bathroom and television but it was in a dark corner under an overhang and we didn’t like it. The lady at this place called her friend across the street and told us to go over and see her for a room – this one was also 70,000 and had a private bathroom, television, refrigerator and air conditioning – wahoo! They lady here was also very nice and was soon telling me that I was like a daughter to her, so we took it. We had been hoping to find a place that was closer to the beach, but all the nice places on the beach in Tucacas are very expensive.

We went back to El Ancla to tell them that we weren’t going to take the room and then went to the Panaderia Reina del Mar for lunch/dinner and then went back to our room and tried to stay up until a reasonable hour but we were very tired from our bad sleep on the bus.

:: August 22 ::

When we left to check out this morning, the owners were gone, probably to arrange their dive and boat tours. We couldn’t leave the money because we didn’t have the correct change, so we wrote a note on their board that we would be back later to pay. We carried our stuff back down the same street again to go to our new hostel (which doesn’t have a sign, but it is above the Panaderia La Criolla). We dropped off our stuff and headed out again to buy some snacks to eat for lunch on the boat.

There were three other people diving with us today, and another two people who came along to go snorkelling. All the others were from Basque region of Spain and spoke Spanish, but one of them (John) spoke English fairly well. John was taking his open water course so the instructor spent most of his time with him. The boat ride to the islands was nice, and we had a chance to see the coast around Tucacas for the first time. We were going diving around some small islands just outside the Morrocoy National Park. The first one we dove at was Cayo Medio, and when we arrived the instructor told Lincoln and I that whenever we were ready we could go by ourselves along the reef until half our air was gone and then turn around and come back. It’s the first time we have dove together on our own without a divemaster and it was kind of fun. The reef was disappointing though because most of it was dead from a bad chemical spill in the area ten years ago. There were a few nice fish, a huge barracuda, some parts of the reef were growing back, and it was nice to be diving again. I think we were spoiled in the Galapagos though, and it was tough to beat those dives. We anchored on Cayo Sur for lunch and our rest between dives. It was a beautiful day, the white sand on the small island was gorgeous, and the water was so warm it was like swimming in a bath. Our next dive was right off the beaches of Cayo Sur, and again we went off on our own. We weren’t even sure which direction to go in, so we ended up going along the reef around the smaller island beside Cayo Sur and then returning the same way. The reef was a bit better here, and we saw some big puffer fish that were cool and Lincoln saw a turtle but it swam away before I saw it. Neither one of the dives were very deep (max 40 feet) so we were down for an hour each time.

There are only two dive shops in town, and they dive at the same sites. At the lunch stop in the boat beside us was the owner of Amigos del Mar. Ooops. He had asked us last night if we were going to dive with him today and we had said no, but didn’t tell him we were going with Submatur. We felt uncomfortable, and surely he recognized us, but we didn’t actually speak to him (we are such wimps). We also still had to pay him for our room, but we wimped out and decided to deal with it later. The other boat was gone when we were finished our dive, so that was a relief.

We arrived back in town around 4:00pm and we still had to walk back to Posada Amigos to pay for our room. Luckily the second owner answered the door (the super skinny guy rather than the big fat diving guy) and we just gave him the money and left. He didn’t ask why we left and we didn’t tell him.

We ate dinner at the restaurant across from where we are staying and the vegetable paella was really good, especially after we waited over an hour for them to make it. The waiter told us it was going to take that long though, so we knew to expect it. It was late by the time we finished dinner, and we were still tired because we hadn’t slept very well on the bad squeaky beds last night so we just went back to our hotel.

:: August 23 ::

Today was one of the laziest days of our trip so far – we are really starting to wind down into “going home” mode. We slept in until 9:00 – an amazing feat for me and one I have not achieved in months. We lounged in our room until 11:00 when I went out to buy cereal for breakfast. We went to the internet café next door to check our email and reconfirm our flights home. We walked to the bridge to ask at the Inparques office about camping on the islands. We ate a late lunch at the Panaderia Reina del Mar again. Lincoln’s feet were blistered from his new sandals and he couldn’t walk any more so we went back to our room and lounged some more for the rest of the day. I did manage to get caught up in my journal so the day wasn’t a complete waste.

:: August 24 ::

Today was a logistical day – we had to go to the bank to pay for our camping (why we had to pay at the bank, I don’t know) and to get a cash advance on our credit card, which ended up taking me two and a half hours (I went without Lincoln because his feet were too sore). Paying for the camping was easy because I could do it at the regular teller. Getting the cash advance was harder because there were only two tellers who did "personal banking" like cash advances and loans and they were very slow. When my number was finally called the lady decided to go for a break, then clean up her desk, then she got around to processing my advance. She photocopied my passport and credit card and also took a picture of me with the passport and credit card. Weird. In the end I got the money, so I was happy.

We bought groceries for our camping trip, and we checked back at the Submatur dive shop to see if they had a boat going to Cayo Sombrero on Friday. We had a few more gifts we wanted to buy for people so we picked up some more small souvenirs. Unfortunately the crafts we have seen here in Venezuela are not as plentiful or as nice as the ones in Ecuador, and we are wishing we had bought more at the Otavalo Market. We are hoping there will be more of a selection at the airport.