#2: [15-Sep-07]

#1: [15-Jan-06]

English

18-Mar-2008 -- El día 18 de marzo aprovechamos un día libre para ir a cazar la confluencia 11N70W. Después de comprar unos sándwiches y refrescos salimos hacia las 12h00 desde la bomba “KM 7” dirección Maracaibo. Después unos 20 minutos por la carretera Coro-Zulia a la altura del pueblo Sabaneta nos metimos por “the outback” del estado Falcón. Una región muy árida y seca con siembra de Aloe Vera. Solo se ve cactus, cocuy y chivos en camino y por supuesto por el tiempo del año mucho polvo. También es el hábitat del pájaro nacional “El Turpial venezolano” o ( Lat. Icterus Icterus ) y tuvimos la suerte de ver una pareja de cerca.

El mapa Venrut (una iniciativa excelente de voluntarios que desarrollaron un mapa interactivo ruteable y gratuito de Venezuela www.gpsve.net) indicaba que había unas aguas termales en camino, sin embargo nunca hemos podido imaginar algo impresionante como esto. El sitio tiene algo extraño y extra-terrestre y en medio de la vegetación de cactus uno entra en un paisaje lunar. Es una colina grande sin vegetación, formada durante siglos por sedimentación de unos 15 cráteres de los cuales burbuja un agua de una temperatura templada.

Cerca de los termales encontramos un camino dentro el cauce de una quebrada. Unos 2km más lejos acercamos bastante a la confluencia y continuamos a pie unos 50m más hasta nuestra meta. Lo conseguimos, jiiiiiiiihaaaaa gracias Enrique y su 4x4 machito fenomenal.

English

18-Mar-2008 -- Supposed to be a working day but ended up being a hunting day. After buying some sandwiches and drinks we left the gas station “km 7” at the outskirts of Coro around noon and left direction Maracaibo. It took us about 20 minutes to reach the village of “Sabaneta” (not to be confused wit the city of birth of the presidential family Chavez in the llanos).

In former hunting stories about this particular point, I read that the visitors all closed in from behind the mountain-range of San Luis. But we decided to take the roundtrip because according to the Venrut (excellent organization of proud gps owners who developed a free gps-map the shortest access was through the village of Sabaneta. The area is very dry and arid with a lot of cactus vegetation and also habits the national bird the “Venezuelan Tourpial” ( shaggy black head, bare blue ocular area and large white wing patch ) of which we had the pleasure of seeing a pair of them.

After 2 river crossings we reached a strange lunar surface with about 15 craters of bubbling warm water. Locals call it “aguas termales”, we found some nice quartz crystals in the area. Finally we reached the confluence point driving up to 50 m through a dried up river (be careful because at that time of the year there was no rainfall but at rainy season this access is almost impossible and you could be ugly surprised by a sudden flood of rainwater coming from the mountain range). Limping on one leg (I had a closed encounter with a cactus needle of 5 cm in my thigh) we reached the confluence point 11N70W. jihhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa mission completed. A little bit tired but satisfied we continued our journey passing through desert villages who listen to the names like “El Alto”, “Pecaya” and “Santa Cruz” to arrive again at the city of Coro.

A recommended hunting-tour in dry season to complete a stay at the marvelous and historic, Unesco protected town of Coro.

I hereby also thank Enrique for the companionship and putting his 4x4 machito at disposition.

Christoph