OK, so this post is from my trip in Venezuela to the Orinoco Delta on a tour.  It was my first ever tour.  This also happened over 2 months ago.  I’ve just been kinda scarred by this tour and haven’t wanted to post this, read this, anything. But I figure I should do it now.  It’s about time to talk about the pain.  Like group therapy.  Except I don’t have to stand in public and speak.  (thank god, I hate doing that):

I went on my first, and probably last tour while in Venezuela.  The tour, to an eco camp in the Orinoco Delta could have been good, if it was not for the lack of actual things to learn and the fact the the tour operator kept staring at me all creepy eyed, and made me quite uncomfortable the whole time (I actually got nervous to be alone at the camp towards the end, and anyone who knows me, knows I go off alone with no problem into sketchy situations all the time).

The Orinoco eco tour I went on, was a 4 day, 3 night tour into the Orinoco delta where the Warao people live.  I was lead to believe that we would actually be living alongside the Warao and learning about them.

No such luck.

We were living in a camp in the river near the Warao, but the most contact we had with them was when we were brought to the gift shop (a house of one of the Warao where they made baskets and things for tourists to buy) and we were guilted into wanting to by stuff

“You should bring money and buy things,  because these poor Warao have no money, and you should buy things, because it is the only way they get money….”

(I’m sorry, I barely have enough money to get out of Venezuela.  I’m not buying anything.)

The rest of the contact with the Warao was to ride buy their houses in boats and be told things like:

“Look at the poor Warao.  This is how they live. They have nothing.  Look at the weird stuff they eat.  Blah blah blah”

One German lady said she wished she had candy for the Warao kids and the tour operator told us we should give money to the camp worker to buy candy in town, so we can throw the Warao children candy as we drive by, because they love candy…very much like throwing monkeys food in a zoo. 

The tour operator told us we should throw candy at the Warao children as we drive by

And that’s exactly how this tour showed us the Warao..like animals in cages.  Sub-human. It disgusted me.

I felt like a ‘John’ and the Warao were the prostitutes. We did not learn about their lives, did not learn their names, could not talk with them because there was no translator for their language.  We were just supposed to go paparazzi on them as we drove by and pointed at the ‘poor Warao”.

The tour sucked.

We got brought in a canoe trips at 6am. 

We went piranha fishing (which I found out, late afternoon is a horrible time to piranha fish, so why they bring us out then is beyond me).

There was a boat trip to a farm and an area where the forest opens up into a flat swampy plane, and we got to watch the sunset light up the sky.  That was quite beautiful. 

But this is the whole tour.  By the second night I was hearing the same speeches over and over.  It was quite annoying and very general with the information actually received at the tour.

The worst part was the tour operator.  He kept staring at me all creepy eyed, and made me quite uncomfortable. 

I am a single girl.

I travel alone.

I guess that meant (to the tour operator) that I wanted to fuck him.  (No such luck guy.  For you, or your just as creepy middle brother)

I never took the canoe out by myself, because he kept offering to come with me.  There is no way I am being alone on a boat with you in the middle of nowhere, guy who cant even get my name right. 

Its Dani.  Stop calling me Dan-eess.

I told you like 1000 times.

That is why I am ignoring you. 

That and the fact you keep staring at me like I’m going to suddenly want to jump your bones if you stare at me hard enough.  More likely I’m going to want to stab you in the face. This whole starring someone down thing doesn’t actually work. Not on me. Or any girl I know. Go back to buying your prostitutes on your days off

(yes, that is true. At some point he felt the need to tell me on his time off he goes into town to stay at the ‘hotel with the girls’)

P.S.: Its called a brothel. Enjoy your Herpaghonnasyphilaids and stop staring at me you creepy fuck.

Yes, so this is a rather strong feeling to have about a tour, but I barely slept at night after my roommate left.  Every noise I heard, I’d wake up, because I was pretty convinced the guy was going to try to sneak into my room (which was waaay at the end of the rooms) in the middle of the night.  I even put stuff in the doorway (there was no door, just a hollow space), in hopes he’d trip over it if he’d try to sneak in. 

The last 2 days I mostly stayed off the tour and in my room reading.  Because I couldn’t take hearing the exact same speech 20 more times, or Mr. Creepy-Eyes trying to telepathically brainwash me into submission while calling me Da-NEESS the whole time.

I have a bunch of posts I wrote during the 2 days I hide in my room-hut.  I will post them at some point.  So you can know what was actually running through my mind. 

I will also post  about some of the cool things…

…like the resident pet Capybara (ok, that’s the Brazilian name.  I forget what they are called in Spanish),

…the amazing food the kid-chefs made,

…the pretty scenery and the few animals we actually saw,

…the faces of the Warao people (cause while we were supposed to be hearing  Creepy-Eyes talk about how poor and horrible their lives are and the weird bad things they must do, I was not listening.  Instead I  was giving Warao kids my $2000 camera to play with and photographing them back, WITH THEIR PERMISSION.  And they loved seeing the photos of themselves.   They also thought it was pretty cool I could walk around the tree branches they used as walkways with no problem.  I guess they’ve never met a gringa rigger before) .

(One of the photos a Warao kid took of me and the other children with my $2000 camera and lens.  Yes, I was passing my camera around to the kids because they wanted to see how it worked)

But yes, despite the few cool things, overall, I hated this tour.

(I did go on another tour, a few months after this one with a hostel company in Santiago.   That tour was much nicer.  I am still not a huge fan of tours, but now that I have been on a good one, I can see the benefits and why people would take them.

I will be posting about that tour too quite soon, and editing this little post-note when I do.  But I DO NOT recommend the Orinoco Eco Camp Tour)

About Dani Blanchette

I am a freelance travel and music photographer and creator of GoingNomadic.com.
I love music, food, and exploring cities without guidebooks. I’ve flown a helicopter, hitchhiked down the east coast USA, and once snuck into the back of a zoo (in Serbia) and pet a lion.
I am always up for an adventure, and sometimes I videotape them.