Guácharo Birds Caves

The Guácharo caves are famous for their oilbirds.  The oilbirds are very special as they are night active fruit-eating birds navigating by echolocation similar to bats. It should be an amazing experience to look and listen to them when thousands of them are flying out of the cave  at the evening hours – of course something we need to see with our own eyes. But as we arrived unfortunately the oilbirds already went out.

April, 2014 in Venezuela

As at the cave is somewhere in the center of nowhere, we were lucky to meet a local tourist guide there, who was just on his way home. He offered us to accompany him to his home village nearby, where some friends run a small camping ground. Due to the lack of public transportation we hitchhiked together. It took less than 10 minutes until a truck stopped and let us jump onto the cargo area together with a group of about 15 teenagers who have been on their way home too. About 1 km away from his home we jumped off the truck that was turning into a wrong direction. But we got no chance to walk the rest, as immediately we got picked up from an other friend with his car.

The small camping ground was quite occupied on the day as a group of international language students stayed over night on their Venezuela site-seeing tour. Their guide was surprised to meet travelers at this well hidden place so we got in conversation. He recommend us a well hidden must have seen waterfall that is only a beautiful one hour hike away.

The way should be very easy to find, so we tried the next day. Unfortunately the track had a lot of branches and of course we turned wrong once just at the beginning of the track. So we got a nice walk through green fields and finally a great mountain view over the area instead of a waterfall, not too bad. The waterfall tour we tried again the day after and this time we succeeded.

hidden waterfall
the well hidden waterfall

And the guide had been right, it’s really a must have seen spot. The waterfall is well hidden inside a valley of tropical green rain forest. At the foot of the fall, there is a nice natural water pool for swimming that was occupied by several pigeon sized shining blue butterflies and a frog. Luckily they had been friendly and so we got invited for a whole relaxing pool day in the center of a paradise like nature.

At the next day we decided to leave before evening, so finally we have never seen the oilbirds every tourist comes for. But we leaved with unique memories about an untouched paradise.

pool and waterfall
just like our private pool

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