fresh n juicy chunks of oyster :: RTW travel blog

My plans of movie watching have been somewhat delayed by a spontaneous jeep ride to a village in the Gran Sabana called El Pauji with a Franco-German couple and their potential father-in-law.
El Pauji is a great community, slap-bang in the middle of the national park, housing a mix of Indios, Venezuelans and a few Europeans who have moved their existence there and decided to build a hut/shack/roof/house in the wilderness ('planning permission' is given by the community as a whole after you live there for two years and they like the look of you, I assume... If they don't they burn your house down as apparently a cocky German who moved there wanting to create a touristic supercomplex found out a couple of years back).
In line with the aforementioned, there's understandably no police force or seemingly any real authority of the Venezuelan government. It is very cool really, as everyone I've seen lives in harmony with no problems like crime (if you exclude the victimless variety) and all affairs of import are handled by a council that is representative of the ethnicities there.
Utopia? Well, whatever it is, it's very beautiful there too. Nature of indescribable variety: dense forests, savannah-like plains, mountains, thick jungle, waterfalls, pools and streams perfect for swimming, tepuys (rocky mountains with flat tops), etc, etc... And I've only just seen a fraction of it.
We got invited to the shared 'house'/kitchen/workshop/farm of an Italian woman who's lived there for several years and makes pizza and cakes and sells them to the village shop and an Indio who makes amazing handicrafts out of local stones and the like. Dog, cats and chickens are running all around the solar-powered house and a cassette player is making it all feel very cosy.
So, we spent the night in El Pauji and got up early the next morning and climbed the El Abismo mountain - at the top a spectacular view of Brasil and neverending jungle directions.
After being attacked by hyper aggressive bees, two of which committed ritual suicide on my behalf after I started running (not too smart with these buggers), and climbing down again in the scorching sun I was exhausted beyond belief. Thus I headed back to Santa Elena that afternoon.
So yesterday, I finally got my deserved movie fix and in the interests of no-one in particular but myself I will proceed to give my 2 cents on two of the more interesting ones: Matrix Revolutions, even though not amazingly great, concludes one of the best trilogies around, IMHO, but then again I was one of the few people who loved Reloaded, so it is likely no one will give a damn about what I say anyway. Tarantino's Kill Bill, Part 1 has blood by the buckets and is quite stylishly shot but hasn't much substance to speak of - kinda good, mindless fun for a while though.
Anyway, that concludes another lengthy entry (anyone still with me?) before I'll probably make it down to Brasil tomorrow. That's if I manage to avoid the temptation of climbing Mount Roraima, which I hear is gorgeous. Grrr, too much to see, too little time... (and there are still sooooh many movies to see... ;)

[the picture above is the pet of a girl at the hostel I'm now staying at. It's an anteater or something and waddles like a cross between a 4-legged duck and a crocodile. Very endearing!]