Day 92 - Margarita Island, Venezuela

TRIP AROUND MARGARITA ISLAND (03/04/09)

The capital of Margarita Island, La Ascension, has another colonial fort but being inland the cannons look onto the hills.

This famous church is home to one of the most famous virgin statues in Venezuela.

Next we visited the inland mangrove swamps on a boat.

Clusters of Oysters were living on the end of many of the mangrove roots.

This huge heron must have been about 5 feet tall.

We had no idea that there was such a thing as fresh water starfish but our boat driver pointed this out to us.

This range of hills is famous for looking like the profile of a face.

A Fish Eagle hunting in the mangroves.

Margarita Island is made up of two land masses joined by a narrow strip. The Eastern Island is built up and quite densly populated whilst the Western part is almost all desert.

In some parts there was almost a sea of Cactii.

Having got over our initial amazement at the number of cactii we decided to take advantage of no one being around and have some fun.

This was just a pretend hug although it should be noted that walking through a huge field of cactii wearing sandals is a VERY bad idea!

This cactus reminded Liz of Adam for some reason.

Elinor will be pleased to know that Liz has finally got her tongue pierced.

Some of the Cactii were huge.

There were many different species.

The cactii in the desert were impressive enough on their own but were flanked by a beautiful stretch of coastline.

Our first South American sunset.