Storm chasing: a weekend trip to Lake Maracaibo

Our intern Stephen is teaching English in Venezuela, and making the most of his spare time by exploring this amazing country. This week, it’s Lake Maracaibo!

The latest excursion in this wonderful country was Los Cienagas del Catatumbo which translates to ‘the swamps of Catatumbo’. We had planned this trip quite some time in advance due to it being one of the most popular excursions from Mérida. It is famed for being home to one of the largest thunderstorms on earth which gets going almost every night of the year. We started off in similar fashion to the previous trip by cramming into a rickety old off-road jeep, on first impression this did not bode well for the next 7 hours. The main concern was the heat because, due to the fact that Mérida is at such a high altitude, as soon as you leave the city the temperatures just skyrocket.

However, it turned out to be nowhere near as bad as anticipated and we had at least 4 interesting stops on the way to Catatumbo. We saw where the original sugarcane is grown and also various Cacao fields. The highlight was stopping at some old caves where we explored and were introduced to all sorts of creepy-crawlies as well as swooping bats from the cave roof. We were greeted by an army of mosquitos at our destination but that wasn’t to deter us because the setting was simply spectacular. We took a 30 minute speedboat ride through winding swamps and spotted all sorts of wildlife. The highlights were the rare capuchin monkeys, the howler monkeys and the sleeping caiman our guide spotted deep in the undergrowth.

We had our own private ‘guesthouse’ on Lake Maracaibo where we had to hang our own hammocks and sleep listening to the addicting buzz of tropical wildlife. Sleeping in a hammock for the first time was definitely an interesting experience and I won’t lie by saying that it was the best sleep of my life but it is something I could get used to. It requires a lot of tossing and turning in order to find that right position, but once I found it I slept like a baby. The only slight disappointment of the trip was the thunderstorm itself. We caught glimpses of some huge bolts of lightning but they were very short and too fast to register any decent photos. Apparently it just depends on the night but some of the pictures we had seen were spectacular. It’s just another reason to go back!

Meanwhile, in the classroom things have been running smoothly and I find myself learning new things every day. It’s amazing how little we actually know about our own language when we grow up speaking it. I’ve been asked several questions about specific language structure and grammar points which have absolutely stumped me. It is something which makes me keen to learn more and give more answers to the students. It has been a mixture of teaching a classroom full of beginner students to giving small group tutorials to students that require a bit more help. So far this has definitely been the highlight for me. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing your students learn as a direct consequence of your teaching methods. I find that teaching a large group depends much more on the students and the greater the range of the learning styles, the tougher it is to teach the group. It is something that you undoubtedly get better at over time, and it’s for that reason that I’m cherishing every moment of this experience.