Beach break at the end of my Venezuela Internship

LoveTEFL intern Stephen has been teaching English in Venezuela for the past 2 months. The group spent their final week at the beach in Playa Colorada.

So here I am sitting in Barcelona (there’s also a Barcelona in Venezuela) airport, getting ready to say goodbye to the LoveTEFL internship experience and carry on my travels by myself. I’m waiting on a flight to Caracas where I’ll spend some time with friends then get a bus back to Mérida.

We have just spent six days on a beach called Playa Colorada which is about an hour to the East of Barcelona in North-Eastern Venezuela. We had a Christmas party there and just relaxed on the beach. It was another new experience but those are becoming normal here in Venezuela. The temperatures hovered around 35 degrees which was a very surreal Christmas experience but one I’ll never forget.  The Jakera crew have their own camp in Playa Colorada where they accommodate students and give them Spanish lessons in exchange for volunteer work in the local community. The village is very poor and the locals really do have very little. It was a real eye opener to see what conditions some people have to live in and has made me even more grateful for my upbringing back in the UK.

On Christmas Eve (the day they celebrate Christmas here in Venezuela) Jakera organised events for the local children at the ‘Jakera Club’ setup. One of the interns dressed as Santa and the rest of us as his trusty elves. We then staged a dramatic entrance to the club where the kids were gathered and each of them received a gift from Santa. Most of them won’t be getting anything on Christmas so to see the sheer joy in their eyes was one of the most heart warming things I’ve ever witnessed. It gave me real motivation to do something similar and help out more impoverished communities.

That evening Jakera threw a wild Christmas party with insane amounts of food and alcohol. I probably don’t need to explain the carnage that ensued! The next few days were spent recovering and relaxing on camp and the beach.

For me this chapter of the adventure is over but LoveTEFL and the internship proved to be the best possible gateway into South America. If you’re unsure on how to plan your travels and want a base to start at for a couple of weeks, or just want a short break to South America then I couldn’t recommend this experience more. When you read online about Venezuela on the official UK government sites, the foreign commonwealth or even most tourist pages, you will read mostly negative things. I urge you to not take these seriously or let them scare you away from the country. The Venezuelan tourist industry has really suffered because of this and it’s rare you bump into another foreigner. I can truly and honestly say to you that if you come here with some common sense and a level head then you’ll be absolutely fine. Venezuelans are among the nicest and most welcoming people I’ve ever come across and I think it’ll be tough to match the welcoming I’ve had here in my future travels.

As for me, I’ll be staying in Venezuela until my visa expires at the end of January because I love the country that much. I then plan on travelling to Carnival in Brazil for February and afterward settling down to teach English in Colombia for a few months. Venezuela has already won a special place in my heart and I can wholeheartedly promise that I’ll be making a swift return as soon as possible.