Some eye candy for you to look at, while I tell you the story of our journey to Los Roques.
This and our trip to Palau are the contenders for "most exotic destination" in our travels so far.
When we went to Palau we were part of a group, always comforting.... and, we traveled thru a long serious of English speaking countries to get there.
Not so this trip ..... just Linda and I with my really limited and really bad Spanish.
Los Roques is a group of islands that are the oldest marine park in the Caribbean.
They are part of Venezuela, so we flew first to Caracas and connected to a small prop plane that took us to the island of Grand Roque and our liveaboard ..... the boat we would live on for a week of diving.
We made this trip in October of 2001. Now think about that for just a moment. What happened in September of 2001 ..... yup the 9/11 terrorist attack in America.
The upside to traveling then, from a purely selfish point of view, was that there weren't very many people who were doing it.
The downside included the very, very, extra, special attention to security and a very noticeable attitude of nervousness, that was shared by everyone.
Now, we have traveled many times to Mexico and were at least comfortable with, if not a little cocky about our very little Spanish.
But what you don't realize, until it's not there, is that on your way to Mexico there is always an English bailout.
If you can't quite read the sign in Spanish, there is probably and English version near by.
If you can't quite get your point across in Spanish, switch to English because the person you are talking to, or someone nearby, speaks it ..... at the very least, much better than I speak Spanish.
Not so in Venezuela ..... at least not in the airport in Caracas.
In the course of our 4 hour layover there, we didn't encounter a single person, including the airline staff, who spoke English ..... or understood my really bad Spanish.
Somewhere in the sign language that we used to ask for directions, we got the gate we were supposed to be at to board our plane.
But never in all the time we waited (about 4 hours) did the monitor in that waiting room EVER say the name or number of our flight.
We had a nice long layover, so we wandered the airport from end to end, more than just a few times, looking for some monitor, or some other clue that if we got onto the plane that parked at that gate, at 4pm, we would be going where we wanted to go ..... Grand Roque.
In the end, a plane did arrive at the gate. We gave the airline employee our tickets at the gate. They did not say "where the hell do you think you're going" or anything that carried a tone that would imply that was what they were saying ..... so we got on the plane.
Imagine our great relief, a hour and half after we took off, when the pilot came on the intercom and gave what I suspected was the standard "prepare for landing speech" ..... and it included the words Grand Roque.
Once on the ground we were met by the crew from our live-aboard ..... the Antares Dancer.
They spoke a lot of languages, maybe 6 or 8 ..... including English. And did a lot, over the course of the next week, to help me with my newfound resolve to improve my Spanish.
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