Adventure, Nature, and Stingy Bitey Thingys: Find it All in Coro

Our family wanted to take a vacation to a different location in Venezuela. We went to Coro, a place with a great quantity of natural attractions. Coro is the capital city of a state called Falcón located in northern Venezuela. l was so excited to see the ocean, sand dunes, museums, and our hotel. l could not wait! We went with my friends Bruck and Shaw and their mom. They are also Americans, and their mom is a on a Fulbright to Venezuela just like us.

After a long over night bus ride, I was relieved. to finally get to the hotel, located by a magnificent park and plaza. Casa de Los Pajaros, which means ‘the house of the birds’, had an interior courtyard. (It rather reminded me of the Ewok village from Star Wars!) The hotel seemed nice untel we found out that the manager had a killer vulture that he planed to murder us all with (just kidding). I slept in a loft with my sister,which I had to get to by climbing up a ladder. Some amazingly nice hammocks hung from the ceiling in the courtyard. Those were great for just lying around when you felt like relaxing.

Coro is the oldest city in Venezuela, so it has lots of museums. We saw a cross from the 1500s, fascinating don’t you think? At the religious museum was a collection of cups, plates, necklaces, statues and things like that. The art museum had displays made out of every day objects. One was a box pierced with nails with a mirror on the side. It was awesome! Another exhibit was about angels, with a collection of statues and photos of the actual statues in settings with real people. One of the guys in the photo looked like the security guard! I thought it was cool that there was a huge statue of the Virgin Mary with Jesus on her lap. We also saw the oldest Synagogue in Venezuela.

I was looking forward most to swimming in the ocean. An taxi/SUV took us on the long drive to the beach. l couldn’t wait to jump over some waves . After hours of skimming waves, l decided to take a break because the salt water was hurting my skin.

I returned the water, but this time Shaw and I went even deeper. l was about to jump when I felt a series of stings! Shaw helped me to shore, and my skin was red and swelling. Something in the water had bitten me! We found these little bits of white stuff on my skin. We thought it might be stingers or dead skin, but we did not know.

I sat for a while until we had a lunch break. We ate some delicious fried chicken and salad. Then, it was back to the beach. We went home in the late afternoon . Both driving there and back, l got to ride in the cargo space!

On our last day, we went to the sand dunes and a waterfall.

The dunes looked like humongous hills of golden sand as far as the eye could see. I worked hard to climb up, but once we got to the top you could run, jump, or roll down. Shaw and l had a contest to see who could jump the farthest. He was victorious most of the time because his legs were longer, but l won a few times.

Then we started the ride home. We stopped to see the waterfall. The waterfall stood huge! I did not go swimming because the water was freezing, but Mom and Risa did. l just decided to throw rocks in the river. Afterward, we headed straight back to the bus station.

Coro was a lot different from Mérida, so I loved the new experience.