6.30pm, Thursday June 11, Canaima ....swimming through rainbows

I am the only person at this camp. I was looking forward to a personal tour of the Canaima Lagoon, but while a private tour has its advantages, such as discarding the rules (wearing life jackets and shoes) and taking as long to explore as you want, when your guide is a young man and you are a single, young female, this makes a private tour awkward.

Anthony and I took a boat from the first lagoon, which has six waterfalls, to the second lagoon. We walked to the third lagoon. Anthony and I swam to the biggest falls, Hacha, a feat I was a little scared of because it is a long way across the lagoon. I ran into the water first. Anthony followed shortly, and when he swam up to me he grabbed me around the waist. Oh, I thought.

After the swim to the waterfall I flattened myself against the watery rocks and then paddled to a smaller fall where I also felt the cool water flow down my back. On this other side of the lagoon, in mosquito territory, Anthony started kissing me and touching me. I let him. We walked back along the rock wall to go back to the other end of the lagoon and then climbed back in the water. It hasn't rained so the waterfalls aren't at their most impressive, but I think today they are perfect. The lagoons are filled with brown water. When you swim you see rays of golden sunshine radiating in the brown and that is all.


Hacha Falls

After our swim we walked behind Hacha Falls. This is slippery and vegetative, the rock ledge fringed with green ground cover and pink flowers. I picked my way carefully along the gleaming ledge and felt the spray of the water from a pouring sheet through which I could see the white sun throwing a ray across the rippling water of the lagoon. It was beautiful and nearly perfect. The walk to Hacha Falls crossed savannah and grass and into rainforest with big sprays of palm, big black ants that Anthony says are poisonous (24-hour fever and headache) and the occasional butterfly. The forest is lovely - a normal rainforest, not spectacular.


behind Hacha Falls

I am a bad feminist. I didn't want to be fondled and kissed by a little brown stranger, even if he is cute. But I couldn't imagine what would happen if I said no. I've spent so much of the last two weeks kissing, why get cringey about it now? What's the harm, really? I am otherwise having a wonderful time and Anthony seems nice enough. Good-hearted, quiet, gentlemanly, if prone to coming on to tourists. The enjoyment of my incredible day is in this boy's hands, so I half-heartedly kiss him back, full of justifications.

I have to negotiate this evening. I told Anthony I'd buy him a beer and go dancing with him, but he has to understand I go no farther than kissing and nothing in public. I do not want to be the poster girl for easy American/Australian tourist.

As much as I love travelling alone, I think I'd prefer ot take a friend next time to avoid these situations. Not a man, because I think people would be less likely to talk to us, but another female. At least there'd be some safety in numbers.

It is hard to decide if Canaima is mystical given the distraction provided by my guide, but I certainly feel a kind of joy being here, in the water, under waterfalls, with their soft roar surrounding me. Despite my previous week's mango allergy, I ate one from off a tree. This has been one of my dreams, to eat a mango off a tree. I threw a stick at it to try to get it down, but it was Anthony who finally knocked the golden fruit off the branch. The little mango wasn't actually better than a market mango as I thought surely it must be. It was just as good but not quite ripe enough. Still delicious. Hopefully my allergy stays away.