Vicious packs of dogs

Sadie running

Went exploring today. There is this mysterious path off the road near where I live that leads up into the hills.

Risho and I went up it today taking a few random paths to end up at "the top" where there was a big dirt road leading to an electricity pylon. Exciting stuff. There was also a nice view of the other side of La Vega, one of the larger barrios in the hills of Caracas. People must walk as much as we did up those steep hills every day to go home! It must be unbearable when it's raining.

Anyway, we figured the road must lead to another road and eventually back to Caracas. Hah! What fools. The road did lead to another dirt road but that just led to another pylon. What the heck's the point in that? A nice dirt road plenty wide enough for a big truck and just leading between two pylons. Absolutely no connection to other roads of any form.

The only logical conclusion is they airlifted in a truck to use the road to travel a few hundred yards between two pylons. Sounds like an appropriate level of inefficiency for Venezuela :-)

So - and this will start to sound familiar to some people - it was now about half an hour before sunset and we were atop a hill in a forest.

We decided to stumble down this very steep and overgrown path that went from pylon to pylon in the hope it would lead back to civilisation.

Instead it led to a snake. A real live snake, about one foot long and deviously camouflaged. Not very threatening so we went on.

After lots more stumbling through plants and getting scratched I happened upon a dog. It had some friends. A bloody huge pack of them, barking a lot and looking like they wanted very much to bite us.

But this was the only way down. So - armed with a big stick I'd been using on the scrubs - I ran full belt at the pack of wild dogs shouting and screaming.

Luckily they moved. They were all talk.

It turns out they were living with a guy up there. Weird.

So after several minutes of shouting, running, and with dogs at our heels we were safe and it was only a few more minutes back to Caracas and "normality".

We had a well-deserved beer and now am cooking dinner and preparing to watch something exciting on TV. Except there's a really annoying and loud kids karaoke party going on in the garden. Was OK for dancing in the shower but now is just annoying.

Oh, and that dog in the picture is nothing to do with the pack of wild dogs. She's a nice one :-)

Going home plans are coming together. They're either:

- home via some days in Miami and San Francisco
- home via Cuba

These are the only two places where I can get free airmiles flights to the UK and are cheap to fly to from Venezuela.

One sounds quite fun and interesting, but I think there's plenty of scope for adventures in Venezuela and Colombia and I really would love to be back in San Francisco for a few days.

What do you think - Dan in Cuba? Is that a good idea?