Coro and the Surroundings!

After swatting more mosquitoes than I can count on two hands, our room in Santa Ana de Coro became completely inhabitable, but just in case any more crazy little critters squeezed through the netting in the windows or under the door, we placed, and angled, the two fans carefully so that they blew around the whole room, covering every inch. We learned from our past trips that mosquitoes and other biting bugs don’t do so well in the face of wind, which thereby formed this rationale. Once convinced of our accurate fan precision positioning we headed out of the comfort of the hostel and went in search of a late night bite. Not a soul was out in the streets and everybody’s lights were either off or the shutters had been fastened so that nobody could break in. Should we have really been out? Well, things turned out as we rewarded ourselves with a neopolitano pasta, Coca-Cola and beer from the only visible restaurant, which was well lit up. On a Sunday night, it seems that everybody is inside. Perhaps as a Catholic country, they treasure Sundays as rest days. We’ll find out if Mondays are equally quiet, or not, tonight as we have one more night here before the next stage of the journey. After the meal it was pretty much straight to bed, and when we woke up this morning, low and behold, there were no mosquito bites! One has just managed to stick its needle-like proboscis through my sock at this moment though. NEVER let your guard down!
As for today, what was in store for us was a real treat! Taking a short, ten-minute hop on the frantic local bus just to the outskirts has never been so easy and the prize at the end was sheer brilliance! We disembarked from the vehicle and marched on for ten more minutes along a short avenue, which came to a dead end. Well, most drivers would call it a dead end, but pedestrians would call it something like a ‘live start’. Certainly the start of an awesome day, even though the day was rolling by already! The concrete disappeared beneath a sudden steep slope of sand, where we eagerly continued hiking up to the brow, pleasantly being shaded by the trees’ wide spreading branches and leaves. At the peak of this sand hill, we were stunned that we had truly reached a large desert of both gentle and raised dunes. It appeared like something straight outside of Aladdin’s cave, and although this sounds absolutely magical, meeting forty thieves was not at all high on our agenda. Least of all here in Latin America!
We discovered that we weren’t alone as we heard numerous shrieks from the nearby thorny shrubbery surrounding us, but it was soon revealed that goats and their kids were the culprits! The wild goats roam freely across the windswept dunes, not really seeming too phased by our humanly presence. That being said, one kid was following far behind his mother and she appeared literally frantic as she choked out a large gruff, whilst projecting her grey and off-pink tongue fiercely forwards in the direction of her beloved. The little baby continued scampering through the sand, which slipped away from his hooves on every step, but he made no real effort to obey his ‘madre’ and hurry up. The rebel!
Having visited the dunes making up the Parque Nacional Los Médanos de Coro, in the harsh midday sun, we are fortunate not to have fried today. The only thing that caught us out were the sneaky grains of sand that filled our shoes, but we had fun making sandcastles out of it all, once emptied!