Robbed in Venezuela!
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Fri 12 Feb 2010 15:42
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Friday 12th January 1100 local 1500
UTC
11:55.37N, 066:44.06W
We arrived yesterday morning at 0700 in Los Roques
and sailed right in through the islands and reefs to El Gran Roque. The wind was
22knots and we had had the benefit of that on our passage. For the two nights at
sea I slowed the boat down by reefing in both genoa and main and setting the
main th spill so we were partly pressed but not overly heeled. This worked well
in the stronger breezes and wind direction that we had for the
passage.
We have started to take more care with security now
as Venezuela has a very poor reputation. When we got to El Gram Roque we
followed our pilot book instructions and went into "town" (this is spread along
the shore and a series of very houses and huts and sand streets) to clear in
this order Coast Guard, Inparque (the national park authority and then the
National Guard and finally the Los Roques Authority where we would pay a levvy
of $2 per foot for the boat and $12 per person. This is a very steep charge but
our pilot book assured us that the money was used to protect the area and that
there was also a boat which would come round the yachts and collect any
rubbish.
After heading first in the direction of the
coastguard we met a uniformed guy and on asking "donde esta guarda costa?" in my
best Spanish we were directed toward "plaza de la carnival" where we understood
all formalities could be completed in a sigle office. After reaching there the
uniformed up and Ray Ban'ed Guarda Nacional guy pointed back in the
direction of the other end of the town where we had been at first. When we got
down there we met the coast guard guy heading to where we were at the plaza de
la carnival. Eventually we could see that all four authorities were in the
process of setting up a temporary office for the "efficient" processing of
expected large numbers for the carnival.
Through my broken Spanish and there fluent Spanish
we manged to get to the bottom line $355 USD !!!!!!! My protestations were
agitating the national guard guy who was not impressed from having to move
from his practiced pose. They were not having any of my protestations so we
chipped in for the $355 dollars and beat a hasty retreat. Daylight robbery - by
the state.
Later that day we were anchored in Cayo Francoise,
beautiful island and reef bound lagoon. We swum and explored with the rib
and really relaxed in such a beautifully secure anchorage while over 20
knots blew all around. Near the end of the day when most other boats had left
the anchoage. I decided to snorkel around and under the boat and see if I could
free the log which had not been working since we left Antigua. I assumed it
was just jammed from being grown over with weed etc. I assumed that because
the system has no speed then I could not get true wind data. This requires some
further investigation, which though not critical information is always
helpful. While I wa sunder the boat I also gave her bottom another scrub as
her lay up in Antigua left her with a green furry bottom and as we
would all agree green furry bottoms on ladies is not very
becoming.
When I was just about done and the sun was starting
to drop down, I was at the back of the boat when I noticed three guys
racing through the water (swimming) at speed towards us. I climbed out of the
water and pulled up the swim ladder before they reached us and held my ground on
the lower step of the transom lest they tried to board.
When thy arrived at the boat they said they had
decided to have a swim race to our boat. I was still a little suspicious as they
were asking "how many people aboard?" I explained there were six of us. "how
long would we stay for?" "where would we go next?".
The conversation proceeded and it turned out
they were three very well educated, polite and friendly young men. They just
wanted some conversation about the outside world and our adventure. They also
laid there cards on the table very early in the conversation saying they the
people, hated Chavez and that their country was being destroyed by
him, was in a sad state of affairs and that each one of them would leave the
country, which they said was communist, as soon as they could. This was a
very enlightening conversation and story, which of course there must be another
side to.
So it seems in summary (so far) the real risks in
Venezuela of robbery seem to be from the state and the people in the country
seem to also feel the same sentiment!
The Los Roques are fantastic and we really feel we
are in the wilderness however if the charges levied on us are normal then there
will not be too many cruising yachts people in the future. I wonder
if all visitors actually bother to clear into the area and perhaps that is
why we have not heard much about the charges before
now?
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