Need Agua!

The border crossing from Colombia to Venezuela turned out easier than we imagined, thanks in part to a small bribe the entire bus put together to speed up the process. Our firststop was in Corro, Venezuela's first capital before Caracas and now a colnial town home to many of Venezuela's oldest religious artifacts. We visited Venezuela's oldest church as well as it's oldest synagogue, which had floors of sand. We also syumbled upon a free concert one night of what was supposedly Venezuela's best orchestra. Coro lies just off the Peninsula de Paraguana, which holds a number of different unique ecosystems. We took a landrover out of the city and after just 5 minutes we were struck by the immeditae change from shrubbery total desert. We parked, took off our shoes and began playing in the enormous sandbox. Pillowy soft sand spread for miles in every direction. Hills and valleys of sand dunes were exhausting to climb with the sun beaming down on us. We felt as though we were suddenly in the middle of the Sahara.

As we took off from the dunes we came across a lagun with a pink haze looming near the shore. As we got closer we could see that it was a group of flamingos feeding on shrimp. From desert we drove through arrid mountains filled with cacti as we headed for a hike in the nearby rainforest. The province of Falcon, Venezuela is one of the 3 regions where the amazing red Cardinal is found and luckily we spotted a few. The rainforest was followed by a dip in the rough waters of the beach at the very tip of the Penninsula, where in the distance Aruba could be seen. For such a small Penninsula it held an amazing amount of diversity.
Hasta luego!