Orinoco

Returning from the coast, to Caracas, Justin hastily arranged flights to Puerto Ayacucho, the only town in Amazonas state. 184000 sq kms of rainforest and mountains, with er 100kms of road, leading only to Puerto Ayacucho and just beyond. 100000 people, of whom 80000 live in the town, leaving the rest to the indigenous people, whose transport is only by boat (or if on foot, half a day's walk from their village, allowing them to return safely before nightfall). Their languages are now official languages of the state, although I suspect most of them prefer to be left alone by the outside world. And in fact, outsiders need a permit to be there.
We stayed amongst the Piaroa people. A few speak Spanish, and it is these people that interface with the outside world, and conduct the few tourists into the interior. The others just come to look and smile.
First we spent an afternoon in Colombia, across the river Orinoco, a village entirely isolated from the rest of Colombia, but Colombia nonetheless,

across the river, 1000 miles from the sea

The entire village seems to be built directly onto bare volcanic rock: no wonder the rainforest is so vulnerable.

Our initial guide, having taken our money, and transported us in his Landcruiser, complete with fuel, outboard, food and other supplies, left us to the devices of El Capitain who sped the two of us upriver for 150 miles or more up the Orinoco to the Rio Autana.We spent the night in hammocks, with no light as the police downriver cream off the fuel for their own benefit, leaving the generator non-functioning, (no more corrupt than our own country really, although more personal)
under the gaze of the sacred mountain, or tree of life, Cerros Autanas
750 metres straight up
and surrounded by rainforest.

Amazing that people can exist in this environment and yet not alter the landscape in the slightest. Their only concessions to "modernity" are plastic containers, machetes, boats/outboards/diesel, the occasional generator, the occasional government built house. And Solar panels (and the odd satellite dish)
Upriver are said to be people that dont have any of the above. And there is nothing upriver to pollute it: no factories, no farms. (I wouldnt drink the water, mind.

After various diversions, we found a waterside family who allowed us the use of their shack to string our hammocks and cook food, before the generator was switched off at 8.15. Yet another sleepless night. This bastard, or one of it's friends, flew at the side of my head in the dark and held on. Egad! Outside, on the river, we could hear the boats speed by in the pitch black, making for home by instinct alone.
Bizarrely, at the airport on the way back, a man spotted my watch (Mondaine, Swiss Railways) and valued it at more than I thought (thanks, hombre!)