7th Sep 04. Isla Los Roques, Venezuela.

Two days in to our ‘trip of a lifetime’ and we are confined to the posada waiting for the tail end of a hurricane to pass over the island. I haven't been watching any news, so I don't know what it's called. A couple of locals tried to reassure us that it was only force 3 - 4. Not that reassuring – as far as I know the strongest is force 5. I've been looking forward to the fiesta of the Virgin of the Valley that was supposed to happen in the main plaza tonight. Rain has stopped play though.

I’m secretly thankful for Tim having brought an array of gadgets. When we were packing I had a bit of a go at him – he even had walkie-talkies for Christ sake. His excuse was that he’d been given them as a present, so he had to bring them. A friend of mine bought me a travel hair dryer so I used the same excuse. Anyway, I’m benefiting already. He’s hooked the mini keyboard I bought him to his Palm and so we have a mini word processor that I can write this on. Fabulous.

We survived one night in Caracas. Checked into a hotel. The recommended 'safe taxi' was a guy in a battered old car with no number plates and blackened out windows. We were visibly shitting ourselves. As we left the airport he was twice stopped by guards wanting to know what he was doing with a rucksack on his back. My first attempt at Spitalian – I explained the bag was mine and it was fine. Bloody Lonely Planet – I’m starting to wish I never read any of it. In the back of the car you could feel the tension. Eventually the driver broke it and started to ask us what we thought of Chavez – the new man in charge of the country. There had been an election just days before. The roads were littered with huge banners saying ‘Chavez – no!’ Everything looked red. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the time of day. And all the cars were HUGE. I finally chilled about the blacked out windows when I realised just about every car had them. When I first got in the car I was thinking ‘he could do anything and no-one could see’, but I think it was more a case of ‘you can’t be seen with all your gadgets Mr and Mrs rich European.’

Once at the hotel we were told that the restaurant was closed and advised to go no further than the restaurant across the road. We were then told that we should come straight back. I was instantly cynical. ‘It must be their mates they are sending us to.’ I fear I was very wrong. It's the only hotel room I've ever been in that has a chain lock on the inside of the door – and the walls around the building are topped with broken glass. We had to leave at 5am the next day to get to the airport for our flight to Los Roques. Our taxi had not turned up and they were not answering the phone. It was dark. The receptionist asked the porter to go to the taxi rank to find out where the car was. He didn’t want to go. Eventually he left. I watched him run as fast as he could down the road, stop after a bit and race straight back. He looked terrified. He said that there was no-one at the office. There was no way I was going to squeal on him, and the taxi arrived a few minutes later so all well. Trying hard not to let paranoia take over.

Los Roques is really beautiful. We arrived in a tiny plane that looked like it came from WW2 and touched down on a `landing strip` on the beach - basically an area temporarily cleared of people. No tarmac, just stony sand. As we were touching down one of the tyres on the wheels burst. Could we have had a serious accident? Better not think about it. Tim looked visibly shaken though.

Down rusty steps into the gorgeous heat. Our luggage arrived on a rusty old trolley which was parked right near the plane and we took it off ourselves. We were greeted by lush multi-coloured sea and thousands of pelicans who spend the whole day swooping into the water for fish. They are amazing. I could watch them all day. There are also boobies, herons, laughing gulls and two tailed frigates, which are really graceful, but feed like vultures. I can recognise them now. It's a twitcher's Paradise here.

One thing that is torture is that you can't really swim in the water because of all the boats and the pelicans. You have to get a taxi boat to one of the other islands in the archipelago. Temps have been reaching 40+ degrees and the water is so clear, calm and inviting. Weather allowing we hope to go swimming tomorrow. The full force of the storm is supposed to hit at 8am, but it doesn’t seem too bad yet and all the locals are insisting they never get hurricanes this far south. I hope they are right, and that Mum isn't watching the news.

The locals are lovely. Really friendly people who go out of their way to help you in any way they can...provided you pay of course. It's very overpriced for the service you get - our room costs $60 a night. No windows, a tap for a shower and no hot water. You get a meal though. Most of the locals live in such humble conditions. Open rooms with just one bed on the roofs of houses. Others in tiny houses with tin roofs tied on with string.

We hadn’t realized when we bought the flights how much of a ‘resort’ this place was going to be. There is definitely real life going on, a school, a church, little shops. But beyond fishing the only other industry is tourism. Our posada is the cheapest available and owned by a lovely local woman. The others are all owned by really rich Italians or Americans and come in at $220 per person, per night!! Anjelica, a Venezuelan friend we met on the island works at one of them. She was earning $200 a month! Most of the money leaves the island. Apart from the odd job, the islanders are making nothing out of the tourism here. It's just wrong.