A travel history - Free Safari Tour and a climb to a tower 60 meters high

Today I want to tell you the story of a travel I made to Mantecal, Apure (the Venezuelan llanos (plain) )

It all started one day when we were a teacher on the university told us to do an talk on a free theme, we chose "The Venezuelan plain because my friend @untasaul was born on there" and just the week before we had the whole week free (vacations).

So we tought that it would be an excellent idea that instead of exposing to them orally on the subject, we could present them a video of us on the plain and explaining them along with the video...

And with that in mind we started planning the trip ...

@untalsaul told us that in Mantecal there is a place called "Hato El Cedral" which is a natural reservoir of species, in this place all the animals of the Venezuelan plain are found.

We could see: Iguanas, crocodiles, chiguires, babos, anacondas, anteaters, foxes, deer and many species of birds of all colors.

Source: http://www.hatoelcedral.com.ve/

Hato El Cedral is a cattle herd located in the Muñoz Municipality of the Mantecal Parish in the Apure State, via Elorza, in the heart of the Venezuelan plain.

The climate is savanna, warm and with two distinct seasons. The temperature exalts, with an average close to 30 ºC, and the level of precipitation fluctuates between 700 and 1500 mm annually.

When arriving at the entrance of the herd, 7.2 kilometers of dykes and embankments await you, from where you can already see the wide savannahs full of wild life, this is how you get to El Campamento Matiyure.

It has an incredible ecological biodiversity internationally recognized. A space of 53,600 hectares transformed to take advantage of the enormous tourist and agro-productive potential it has.

That was the plan, go to Mantecal and visit the herd the cedral.

@untalsaul, @diego-ar and I went from San cristobal, Táchira to Mantecal, Apure.

The first day when we arrived in Mantecal we started to organize the ideaand we realized that it was an exclusive and expensive place ... To enter you had to make a reservation for the weekend and the total package cost between 50 and 100 $ depending of the package.

Luckily the mom of @untalsaul knew someone who works at Herd el Cedral and that worker put us to talk with the manager

We said that we were making a documentary for the university about the species of the Venezuelan plain, and since El Hato el Cedral is a great icon of the Venezuelan plain, we could not let it pass.

The manager liked the idea and wrote us on the list to go the next day !! ...

That same night we got on the 60 meter antenna that I published in the previous post

but at night we could not record anything or take pictures, we had to go back in the day light!!

the next day we got ready and went to the herd the cedral. To get there we took a bus that took approximately 30-40 minutes of travel to the site.

when we arrived we found that we had to walk an 7 km route to get to the herd, or we could wait until some jeep to arrive and take us (this could take several hours) so we decided to walk and see animals on the way .. .

We could see: Iguanas, chiguires, babos, crocodiles and many birds of all colours.

Photo Parkour

After walking those long 7km we finally arrived at the herd and the manager received us kindly, and the first thing he asked us was: Did you walk all that? It is a loong road

He told us to get comfortable, that there was coffee in the dining room and that in a few minutes he would attend us

The idea was to interview the people in the herd so they could give us information about the site and use that audio as a background of what we recorded on the way

at the end of the interview the manager tells us: hey guys do yo have something to do later? Are you in a hurry? there are some people staying and in a couple of horus the safari tour goes out, if you want, you could stay and also do the safari tour

our face was full of impression and the first question was, is it free? We had time but not money hahaha.

At this point, the camera batterie were already starting to die because we were using them all day from morning and we were not really expecting a safari tour, so we had to record as much as possible on the way ...

And after a couple of photos and videos the camera batterie died! But that only made me enjoy the moment more, it made me to appreciate the beauty of the place.

On this safari tour we could see: Iguanas, crocodiles, chiguires, baboons, anacondas, anteaters, foxes, deer and many species of birds of all colors.

At the end of the Safari they took us to the entrance (thank God we did not have to walk all they way back) and it was around 6:40 pm and it was already dusk ...

In order to not make the story long. we had to return asking for a ride (hitchhiking) and we ended up arriving home at 12am at night ...

it was worth it

The next day we had to buy the ticket back to our city, but for that day at night there were no buses, we had to wait for the next day in the morning.

So we had another day in Mantecal and I had a feeling in my chest that we could not leave without recording the climb to the tower and the epic view from the top.

As we could not climb the tower during the day because we ran the risk of someone calling the police, we decided to go up that midnight at 5 am (still at night so not be seen) and receive the sunrise up there and record that epic view.

And we did it...

The next morning we took the bus back to our city after having lived some good adventures.

Who would have thought that even a free safari tour would be given to us hahaha ....

In the next post I will show you the "documentary" we did for the university!