Sea Cycle on the Rio Manamo

Sea Cycle Log #13 N 10.4 -W61.54 to N9.13 - W62.13

Leaving Ensenada Carriaquita and all the previous day’s excitement, we headed off to the Orinoco River Delta, the great weeping eastern shoulder pad draining Venezuela and Columbia on the map of South America. Heading due south we had a great sail on a beam to close reach and had current with us for the morning. Off the stern we could see the entire Paria peninsula as it ran down from the heights on its eastern end disappearing into the west. Around noon the winds fell off a bit but then piped up as we crossed half way on the gulf and were now getting the sea breeze on to the Venezuelan coast along with current entering from the Serpents Mouth channel and the south Atlantic at the southern end of Trinidad. In the distance scattered off to the south east was the main Trinidad oil field with all its rigs and attendant working vessels. Three o’clock found us rolling up the jib and running along the coast, wind on the nose as we entered the approach to the channels leading to the mouth of the Manamo River. Here the water was muddy brown very reminiscent of Chesapeake Bay and we motored in waypoint to waypoint monitoring the depth meter and trying to ignore our senses which told us to follow the buoys as in red right returning but in this case were supposedly marking a shoal. This is another thing, you cannot fully trust buoys anywhere in the Caribbean. Things move and sometimes local buoy age could be a stick in the mud or whatever the locals have on hand. Most of the time you have to trust your eyes for the depth and reefs but in this case there was no visibility. The charts showed eight foot depths but we never saw less than twelve feet. Finally at the river’s mouth passing an oil derrick on our port and some kind of gas rig throwing a large flame whose reflection had mystified us from miles out, on the starboard, we ran up the river to Perdanales, a village of maybe 400 to report in at the local La Guardia station. At the La Guardia which is not a customs or immigration post, but the police, we showed our passport and then they signed a prepared form which Watermark had given us with time of arrival and such and also officially stamped it. On our way out we did the same procedure and when returning to Trinidad had no trouble checking back in with officials. The Guardia officials were very pleasant and seemed humoured by our attempts at translating. Needing local currency we searched around to try and find a money changer but had no luck, but the next day we found a Senor Joppa who gave us 180,000 Bolivars for 40 US or 4,500 to one. The official rate is 2200, but nobody except banks or credit cards who have no choice, give that. Neriea had reported to us they were getting around 5000 or greater at Puerto La Cruz, so we felt we had done alright. At the local cantina we managed to pick up 24 cold beers (Polar) for 10US or a little over 41 cents per beer, very frosty and with a picture of a bikini girl gracing the can. We did the first night off the La Guardia Post anchored in 32’ and spent the night listening to the chain drag across a rocky bottom of the fast moving Perdanales River. On the way back with two weeks experience we anchored on the other side in 14’ and mud. Live and learn. These rivers carry a heavy load of silt and at most river bends the inside corner runs shallow with the opposite corner running deep. From Perdanales it is roughly eighty miles to the town of Tucapita where the Perdanales and Macareo all converge with the main Orinoco River. Many cruising boats head down to the Macero further to the south and a two day trip, which is reputedly less densely populated than the Manamo with a larger settlement of the Wareo Indians. This tribe speaks their own language but do understand some Spanish. We spent two full weeks on the river transiting as far as we could to about 16 miles south of Tucapita where we came across the power lines which block your way from heading further south to the main Orinoco branch. We did twelve different anchorages on the trip not including the arrival and departure at Perdanales. The first 50 miles of the river was a mangroves wilderness with no real sign of dirt and the Wareo villages all seem to be in this river section below and around the Orinoco Delta Lodge. I counted five villages in this stretch. The villages are built out right over the water and ranged from eight huts to around forty and are struggling with a twenty first century identity crisis. The huts are built on stilts; they have a lashed floor of small trees or saplings, basically a corduroy floor. Roofs are thatched and the sides are opened to the elements. Further up the river past the lodge sides began to appear on some of the houses in the Venezuelan villages. Everybody sleeps in hammocks and there is an afternoon siesta in the heat. The stilt houses are connected by a walkway of the same construction as the floors. The houses are separated from the walk with log ramps to act as an entrance walkway. They walk on all this like the flying Wallendas. The walkways have a general littering of pig and dog excrement with everyone is running around barefoot. In the corner of the hut there might be a colour TV and I also saw a couple of cell phones. After dark the generator turns on and the walkway lights up. Then the TV and boom boxes come on to cover the sound of the generator and we spent the evening listening to Celine Dion and Ricky Martin till about ten when everything was shut down. All this under a never ending canopy of stars made for a surrealistic scene. Each village we came to had two or three outboards mounted to their canoes or larger pirogues with twenty gallon drums acting as gas tanks. Everybody else was in a dugout canoe. Bailing was by a flat dish and constant with the odd bail serving as a drink. The saltwater tide is heavier than fresh water and sinks to the bottom. The children were all pros at the handling of these very tippy craft At the first village about twenty miles up we were swarmed by canoes of children as we tried to anchor and further disconcerted with something very white and pinkish which was breaking the surface and feeding to the other side of us. I thought it was a manatee but turned out to be fresh water dolphins. These dolphins do not have a pronounced dorsal fin but have a very big forehead which gives them quite the prehistoric look. They didn’t seem as playful as ocean dolphins, with very short surfacing periods making a camera shot an elusive thing. Meanwhile back at the ranch Deb came up on deck with cookies which she distributed to the kids. The first village had little to trade but one canoe had baskets which after some tough negotiations we settled on in exchange for some tee shirts, girls’ underwear and hair barrettes. . Our bartering goods came from a shopping expedition in Port of Spain where we had loaded up on children’s clothes, barrettes, face clothes and clothes pegs which we wound with fishing lines and hooks. Audrey Paige, possessors of a brand new paint job by Nigel in Trinidad, quickly organized fenders with Dennis playing maestro with his boat hook as baton while Allayne did the trading which was brought to an end with “No Mas Hoy” (no more today).

The children were beautiful and very innocent in manner. The adults all seemed to be short in physical stature. We did notice a lot of eye infection at the first village along with the older adults missing front teeth. As soon as dark arrived we headed below because of the bugs which have ownership of the airways at night. Some nights you were ok for a while and then swarmed instantly with no warning by noseeums or mosquitoes. We paid the price the first time it happened when we didn’t get the nets down quick enough because we were barbequing. The rest of the night became a hunt and destroy mission inside the boat. The rule then became as soon as the parrots starting heading home to roost then it was time to close up shop or become part of the nocturnal feeding ground. The parrots head home in groups of two and occasionally a trio of three. I am not sure whether the third was a junior family member or a little bit of kinkiness in parrotdom but they are quite the cacophony squawking all the way home to the roost. Their night time roost as we noticed in Trinidad is in the same place every night. During the day the major airborne risk was the horse fly coming in at the size of a dollar coin. With great stealth these little nasties land quietly and then proceed to turn you into a quarter pounder stand. Wasps here are the size of small hummingbirds with large thoraxes and long dangling legs. Several times I had to go armed with industrial grade insect killer and evicted them from their building projects in the sail covers and sail saddle bags. The most visible of all the insects though is the dragonfly. I have never seen so many and so big. The water lily fields were full of them. Several times we parked the dingy right into the bora to observe but couldn’t quite make out if they were pollinating the plants or feeding off of something on them. The river with its bora fields which were so large and dense along with all the over sized insects’ freewaying through the air kept me expecting a Brontosaurus to lift its neck up out of the water at anytime. In the end we settled for Lost World on the DVD player. Big beautiful indigo blue butterflies were abundant but very hard to get a photo shot of, because when they land they close their wings and are brown. We wondered if these were the same blue butterflies that Papillion chased for dye when incarcerated on Devils Island a few hundred miles south of us. Recently I met a Canadian couple finishing a circumnavigation who stopped on the S. African to Trinidad leg at Surinam and visited the old Devil Island now a museum and said the museum claims Papillion never existed and the whole thing was a fabrication. Oh, well that’s entertainment for you. Birds were plentiful with lots of kingfishers, cranes and buzzards along with howler monkeys. Up the Canos we spotted very large kingfishers with a beautiful green bodies and neck colourings. As you go up the river you can leave the big boat and dinghy for miles up these deserted Cano’s. Some are broad and deep enough for the sailboat while others you motor up beneath the canopy. On one quickly narrowing Cano the exhaust and noise from our dinghy motor disturbed a flock of bats leading to a quick retreat. Tide is a factor running over two feet so you have to watch where you are and your depths. There was a strong mud bank smell when the tide was in ebb exposing the banks and the mangrove roots. The other big thing here with the tide is the Bora or water lilies that float up and down the river with the tides like pack-ice. This will mostly affect you in the Cano’s where you would anchor or where you might be dinghying. The first time it happened I thought we had had it, being locked in for the season like a tropical Shackelton but by the next tide flood it had all disappeared except for some which clung to the anchor rode and bow. On one Cano while out dinghying Audrey Page had headed back fifteen minutes earlier and when we headed back we found them throwing the anchor out and kedging through the Bora in a channel that an hour earlier had been clear. This was the one time when having an air floor dinghy paid off as we lifted our motor and kind of dragged ourselves over it with some push and pull. There was very little traffic on the river during the day with just the odd pirogue but the early mornings and late afternoons being the busiest with the two water buses and the ambulance doing their daily trips from Perdanales to Tucapita up river in the morning and down river in the afternoon. Occasionally large thirty to forty foot flat bottomed pirogues powered by seventy five hp Yamahas would be plying the waters carrying fridges and household appliances up or down the river. Having no roads the river truly is their highway. About ten miles up from the lodge the country started to change and become savannah with cattle grazing on the land. Finally about sixteen miles north of Tucapita we arrived at the power lines which were located at a large village where we saw our first car and road. It was some sort of holiday or political celebration with huge speakers being set up in the village square. At the time Chavez’s referendum on the constitution was only a couple of weeks away. The power lines were low slung in the centre but Dennis and I thought with a depth sounder to sound the edges and the sextant for height maybe we could slide under the lines at shore. At this point both crews put their foot down pleading dwindling supplies and plus the chance not to be known as the gringos who knocked out half the Delta’s power grid on a national holiday. Anchoring down from the village a couple of miles we started the way back the next morning. The Canos off the main river can go from the very narrow to the very wide. The Orinoco Delta Lodge sits off the main river on a very wide Cano intersecting with another. Both Cano’s run for miles according to a river expedition leader we chatted to who was leading river trips in kayaks. On arrival we passed the lodge and went further up its main Cano exploring and then the next day returned and to our surprise found two British flagged boats anchored off. Both were beneteaus, Malarkey and Daramy and that evening we all had dinner which was a variation on the day’s lunch of beans, rich and fish with beans, rice and beef. The Orinoco Delta Lodge sits off the main river on a very wide cano intersecting with another. The lodge is a large open structure thatched roof with a bar and restaurant. Young backpackers dominate, with the zoom lens tourist crowd coming next. There are maybe a dozen cabins with shuttered windows, thatch roof and netted for overnight accommodations. Tourists seem to fly in to Ciuad Bolivar or Tuciptia from the Caribbean resorts and are then transported down to the lodge in fast pirogues. Their trips seem to be of two or three day duration. Several times during our trip a boat load of tourists would come around a river bend and when seeing us anchored would start shooting shots of us like we were the local exotica. Most of our Cano exploring was done in the early mornings before the heat came up. Then a little project or reading during siesta time. Dennis would spend late afternoons fishing off the banks in his dinghy hoping to catch a piranha which are not a threat to swimmers here. A local had told us to fillet them and cut those into small strips and barbeque them, supposedly quite tasty. Dennis did manage to land a small fresh water stingray which he released. In the “you can take the boy out of the country but not the country out of the boy category”, Dennis found some coconuts and flourishing his machete proceeded to show us how to score and quarter the nut to get out the juice, jelly and meat. No waste, total usage, but partway through the exercise he stopped and taking a long look at us said you know what today is, it’s the opening of deer season in Michigan. Some old habits die hard even in tropics. The high light of this trip if you are in the right season is the scarlet ibis. We managed this sighting on the way back downstream. Less than twenty miles up from Perdanales lies an island in the middle of the channel. The ibis as we had seen in the Caroni Swamp prefer islands for roosting. Just before dusk they started coming
first in dribs and drabs and then filling the sky like squadrons of flying monkeys all headed to the island. Not wanting to miss our chance for some photo’s we jumped in the dinghy and floated down the river close to the roost. These are nervous birds and there were literally thousands so we didn’t want to disturb or bother them. As we approached the trees each branch packed with these time share occupants would start squawking and move up a few feet to another branch. Still from the photo’s you get the idea. The horizon is outlined by a consistent tree line and topped by an ever changing vista of blue sky, tall thundering cloud formations and full gray cloud banks dropping their rain in vertical slants. Sometimes all three in combination worked the horizon. Here we got caught a couple of times misguessing a squall direction or its intensity and ended lathered up with no rinse, so off to our solar shower. Catching water here was also a must. Just as back up, we have a rain catcher Deb made last summer which is always hoisted and drains to a jerry can which we then filter into our tanks. In the end we caught ten gallons and still had twenty left when we finally pulled back into Chagauramas. We carry 52 gallons in tanks and t
wenty in cans so we probably would have lasted another week. Exiting the river on the ebb we encountered a stiff breeze on the nose which also was kicking up the waves bringing Sea Cycle to a shuddering stop a few times. Finally off the bank and into deeper water we beared off and motor sailed along the edge of the oil fields ducking squalls and pulling back into Chagauramas in the dark around 7pm. To be continued