Our Great Adventure : Arepas & Squalls in Los Roques, Venezuela

I'll always have trouble understanding why when people age they become more risk-averse. Statistically speaking, aging tends to shorten your life; so with less life left wouldn't you take more risks?

I mention this because many of the other cruisers we meet are older than we are and we are constantly being told "Don't go to _______, it's not safe." The blank has been filled by some of the most amazing (and safest feeling) places we have ever been, including Haiti which we fell in love with and have written about in detail.

Which is why with everyone telling us not to sail to Venezuela it made us want to do just that. Don't get me wrong, Venezuela is currently experiencing extreme hyperinflation in an economic crisis - we spent a lot of time researching our visit and decided unfortunately to only go to the offshore islands of Los Roques and not to the mainland. We made this decision in December 2016, with the knowledge that the political situation there could change on a dime (or 300 Bolivars when we arrived) and we might have to leave with little or no warning. We did end up leaving a few days earlier than we would have liked but it had nothing to do with the political situation or how safe we felt - it was weather related.

We had our best sail yet over the three days to Los Roques from Martinique. It was our first downwind sail and a welcomed change from beating into the wind! We had perfect weather, didn't hit a single squall and our autopilot worked quite well for most of it. Since we have spent most of the time hand steering, and have had to run our engine a lot when beating into the wind, we forgot just how much power an autopilot uses! This is especially true when under sail and not charging the batteries with the engine. During our sail to Los Roques, we had periodically turned the engine on to put a little juice into the batteries over the three day trip but apparently we overestimated our batteries and left charging them a little too long. On the last evening before arriving we tried to turn on the engine to power the batteries but the engine wouldn't turn over! We wanted the engine to turn on for anchoring when we arrived the next morning, so to conserve what little power we had we turned off everything except our navigation lights - this meant back to cursed hand steering! As we rounded the point of the main island, Gran Roque, we tried to fire-up the engine but the battery was too low. We were tired from the three day sail and a sleepless night hand steering and we didn't have any accurate charts for the area so we weren't thrilled at the prospect of anchoring under sail in fairly strong winds with coral reefs all around. Luckily the change in the point of sail as we rounded Gran Roque meant that our wind generator was ripping!! Sailing with the sun on our panels and the wind generator flying gave us just enough power to turn the engine on - what a huge relief!

Los Roques is an archipelago conveniently located north of the mainland of Venezuela, near the Dutch island of Bonaire and about 72 hours from Martinique. The check-in process has several stages to it and apparently they are supposed to be done in a certain order. I'm quite sure we messed up the order but no one seemed to mind and it all worked out in the end. However, between arriving and anchoring, checking-in and exchanging money our first day was eaten up! One of the first things you need to do when arriving (after checking in with the coast guard) is to get some money exchanged. The park fee and the immigration fee have to be paid in local currency. Luckily everyone and their brother is in the money exchange business. Unluckily a cruise line had arrived that morning and its passengers had been into town to change money. The small island had literally almost run out of cash in local currency. We spent over an hour walking around asking places where to change money and EVERYONE was out. We finally found a "spa and nail salon" that had some Venezuelan Bolivars left for sale. For US$100 we got to watch not one but three young woman, with very long and fancy nails, skillfully count money at lightening speed. When they were finished, we got an entire large shopping bag full of money! It takes SOOO long to buy anything if the place doesn't have an automatic money counter because it all has to be counted out by hand!

Bag of cash

Counting our money

Enjoying a beer after all that money counting!

Along the "check-in" route we were able to pick up a map and plan out which islands we wanted to see. After a wonderful sleep in our own bed (instead of cockpit naps) we woke-up refreshed and went to check out the main island of Gran Roques. We walked up to the top of the island for some spectacular views - this also gave us a good idea of where some of the other islands were that we planned to visit!

Nomads is the last boat on the right :)

After the walk up the hill, we need to refuel with a homemade arepa stuffed with cheese!

Since James' birthday involved blowing up an autopilot computer and furthering our autopilot disaster, we resolved to celebrate it later and pretend his birthday was on a different day. Well this seemed like the perfect opportunity to celebrate! Gran Roque is full of posadas and they each have restaurants - many are on the beach and candle-lit. We didn't realize but most of them only cook for their hotel guests, but fortunately we found one that had space for two more people. It was incredible!! For US$12 we BOTH had a four course meal with wine and mojitos!!! The food was excellent and we came to learn that Venezuelans can seriously cook - every meal we ate was perfect.

The birthday boy

From Gran Roque we traveled to several of the other small islands that make up the archipelago. Each one is similar but has it's own feel. Only a few have restaurants or in fact people there. Others are totally empty and secluded. Even Gran Roque has sand roads and the only vehicles are work trucks - everyone else walks or bikes.

Main street on Gran Roque

The islands are the perfect combination of friendly, kind people, amazing restaurants, and stunning beaches and water with no one but yourselves around. We spent almost two weeks sailing around the islands, relaxing on the beaches and snorkelling and swimming in the water. We were so shocked at how cold the water felt to us! We have become massive wimps who are accustomed to swimming in bathtub temperature water. We couldn't believe how friendly the people were - as we encountered people having beach fires and cooking we were offered lunch on more than one occasion since they had cooked so much food!

The only excitement we had was when we hit the most ferocious squall either of us have ever encountered. We were a narrow channel with shallow reefs on either side which were uncharted - we could only navigate by looking for the light-blue water of the shallow areas. We noticed a very dark cloud approaching quickly but didn't think it would be much different than other rain that had fallen over the past few days. We decided to head out of the channel towards a tiny spit of sand (the classic deserted island) so we could anchor and go for a swim. All of a sudden it started pouring so hard we could no longer navigate by sight. The wind cranked up to 53 knots (98km/h!!!), the strongest we have encountered so far. Hopes of going to our deserted island evaporated but neither of us cared - we were so worried about being blown into a reef. James turned the boat into the wind and increased the revs to try to hold us in place. The rain was so strong that our cockpit drains were no match for the volume of water and the water was sloshing all around - I could barely see my hand in front of my face the rain was so intense. Once James had the bow into the wind I thought I was going to be blown over the wind was so strong! It was all we could do to retrace our path on the chartplotter towards the narrow channel but without being able to see anything we had no idea where the reef was! We turned the boat around again for another loop, almost impossible in this wind, and held 'er steady in the squall. After about 30 minutes the wind and rain subsided and we could see from our track that we had come within 10' of being washed up on the reef - phew.

The islands are full of very cute dogs and everyone seems to look after a few strays. All the dogs were curious and friendly and were very fascinated with our dingy pump. They also enjoyed the shade of our beach umbrella and were only too happy to sit with us. They weren't shy and if we got up to swim they had no problem stretching out, taking up all the space in the shade and making a bed on our beach towels!

While we were there the Venezuelan government decided to discontinue the 100,000 Bolivar bank note and didn't give a whole lot of notice that they were doing so. We had no idea this was happening until our friends Noomi radioed us and asked if we had any trouble spending our notes. We had noticed a massive line up at the town bank but that was all. Noomi had to spend the notes they had that day otherwise they would have been worthless - this meant a shopping trip for Ana where she bought several dresses. What did Nomads buy?!? Diesel. Lucky me. Although at CAN $0.10 a gallon it was still pretty exciting! The story behind the discontinued notes is that the paper and size of the bill is the same as US currency and some mob or another is washing the bills and making counterfeit US currency. A few days later the government said they would continue to use the bills for a few more months since people hadn't had time to turn the bills in and also the government hadn't printed enough of the 200,000 bolivar notes so the country was running out of currency. The inflation was mind blowing - on day one a beer cost CAN$0.30, one week later it was CAN$0.75!

The "Christmas winds" were starting to build and after listening to the weather on our SSB radio we decided in order to make it to Bonaire for Christmas we should make a move - we had a whole season last year full of sailing in rough weather and would rather leave two days early than fight all the way to Bonaire. We headed to the main island of Gran Roque to check-out and to get one more Arepa from Mama Julia.

On our way to Bonaire we stopped at Aves, another Venezuelan island and it was just as beautiful as any island in Los Roques.

This was the destination we were most excited about for this season and it didn't disappoint. We had a fantastic time in Los Roques and hope we can go back again. If you are contemplating a visit there don't hesitate to contact us and we'd be happy to answer any questions!