Venezuela Holidays Explored

There are certain countries you visit, and then there are countries you experience. Venezuela is firmly in the second camp. This is a place where you can breakfast on a Caribbean island that looks like the Maldives, lunch beside the tallest waterfall on Earth, and fall asleep in a hammock listening to howler monkeys, all in the same trip. It sounds like marketing guff, I know, but Venezuela really is that varied, that dramatic, and right now, gloriously empty of tourists.

From boom, to bust, to a quiet comeback

To understand Venezuela as a holiday destination, you need a bit of backstory. Not so long ago, this was the place to be. By 1970, thanks to its colossal oil reserves, Venezuela had become the richest country in Latin America, and it attracted the mega wealthy with luxury hotels and a jet-set sheen. Caracas was a buzzing, modern capital, Margarita Island was pulling in charter flights from Europe, and adventurous travellers were already trekking into Canaima to gawp at Angel Falls.

Then came the collapse. Through the 2010s, hyperinflation, political instability and shortages hollowed the country out. International arrivals, around a million visitors in 2013, slumped to barely four hundred thousand by 2017. Hotels shut, airlines pulled their routes, and Venezuela slid almost entirely off the holiday map. Millions of Venezuelans left the country altogether.

But here's the twist, and it's a lovely one. Over the last few years, things have been quietly turning. The economy has partly dollarised, which sounds dry but matters enormously to a visitor, it means prices in dollars are stable and everyone from posada owners to boat captains is happy to take them. Flights have been trickling back, hotels and guesthouses have been reopening across Canaima, Morrocoy, Mochima, Margarita and Los Roques, and official figures put foreign visitors at around 1.25 million in 2023, a huge jump on the year before. Word is spreading, helped along by travel vloggers and backpackers who came out of curiosity and left raving. The people who go tend to come back converted.

A country of outrageous variety

Let's talk geography, because Venezuela's landscape is genuinely bonkers in its variety. You've got over two thousand kilometres of Caribbean coastline in the north. You've got the Andes rising in the west, all misty páramo and snow-dusted peaks. You've got the endless grasslands of Los Llanos flooding with wildlife, the Amazon rainforest in the south, and the Gran Sabana, a rolling golden savannah punctuated by tepuis, those flat-topped mountains that look like giant stone islands and inspired everything from The Lost World to Pixar's Up. Oh, and the Orinoco Delta, a vast watery labyrinth where river channels wind through jungle. Most countries would kill for one of these. Venezuela has the lot.

The beaches, and blimey, what beaches

If pristine beaches are your thing, Venezuela will ruin everywhere else for you. Start with Los Roques, an archipelago of some 350 cays and islets about 160 kilometres off the mainland, protected as a national park since 1972. The sand is bone-white, the water shifts through about seven shades of turquoise depending on the light, and the visibility for snorkelling can run to absurd distances. The one inhabited island, Gran Roque, is a sandy-streeted fishing village of brightly painted posadas, no cars, no resorts, no fuss. Each day you hop in a boat to a different cay, Francisquí with its triple sandbar, or Cayo de Agua, where a slender strip of sand links two islands and the snorkelling among the coral gardens is world class. Nurse sharks cruise around in waist-deep water like it's no big deal.

Closer to the mainland, Morrocoy National Park is the easier win, roughly four hours from Caracas by road. Its star is Cayo Sombrero, a perfect little circle of white sand and palms ringed by glassy, swimmable sea, the kind of island a cartoonist would draw. Nearby Tucacas and Chichiriviche serve as jumping-off points, and the seafood shacks along the waterfront grill whatever came in that morning.

Over on the central coast, the drive down through the cloud forest of Henri Pittier National Park to Choroní is an experience in itself, one minute you're in dripping green jungle thick with the smell of wet earth, the next you're looking down at the glittering Caribbean. Playa Grande is the lively local beach, all music, rum and fried fish, while a short boat ride away lie Chuao, famous for some of the finest cacao on the planet, and wild little Cuyagua, where a river meets the sea and surfers pitch tents under the palms. It's raw and gorgeous.

Then there's Margarita Island, the old favourite, with its long curve of golden sand at Playa El Agua, the surf at Parguito and those knockout sunsets over Juan Griego bay. Mochima National Park, further east, hides dozens of coves of calm, emerald water between rocky headlands, best explored by little fishing boat with a coolbox and no plan whatsoever. And if you truly want to get away from everyone, La Tortuga sits out in the Caribbean, barely developed, blindingly beautiful.

Beyond the beach towel

You could spend a month on the coast alone, but you'd be mad to miss the interior. Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site bigger than Belgium, is home to Angel Falls, which plunges 979 metres off the edge of Auyán-tepui, so high that much of the water dissolves into mist before it lands. Getting there is half the fun, you fly into Canaima village, stay in a jungle lodge beside a rust-red lagoon, and travel upriver by motorised dugout canoe through country that feels properly prehistoric. At Salto Sapo you can walk behind the curtain of a waterfall, which is every bit as brilliant as it sounds.

South of there, the Gran Sabana rolls away to the horizon, golden grassland dotted with tepuis, waterfalls and swimming holes of tea-coloured water. Fit travellers can trek up Mount Roraima, the most famous tepui of all, whose summit is a moonscape of black rock formations, carnivorous plants and crystal valleys. It's a multi-day slog and worth every blister.

Fancy mountains instead? Mérida, in the Andes, is a cheerful university town with a famous cable car climbing towards the country's highest peaks, plus páramo hikes, hot chocolate at altitude and more adventure sports than you can shake a paddle at. Wildlife lovers should head to Los Llanos in the dry season, where safari-style drives and boat trips turn up capybaras, caiman, anacondas, giant anteaters and more bird species than you'd believe. Out west on Lake Maracaibo, the Catatumbo lightning puts on an almost nightly storm show, silent flickers over the water for hours, best watched from a stilt house in the village of Ologa. Fun fact, those stilt houses are how Venezuela got its name, early explorers thought it looked like a little Venice.

Even Caracas rewards a day or two. The city sits beneath El Ávila, a forested mountain you can ride up by cable car for cold air, strawberry stalls and views over the whole valley, with the seaside village of Galipán tucked just over the ridge.

Where you'll sleep, and how it all works

Accommodation leans towards the charming rather than the corporate. The classic Venezuelan stay is the posada, a small, family-run guesthouse, often full board, where the owners treat you like a long-lost cousin. In Los Roques that's basically the only option, and packages typically bundle your room, meals, boat transfers to the cays and sometimes even the flights from Caracas. Canaima has proper jungle lodges, including some seriously lovely ones on the lagoon. Margarita still has its big all-inclusive resorts, while Mérida and Caracas offer everything from hostels to slick city hotels.

Amenities are decent in the cities and tourist hotspots, but go in prepared. Dollars in cash are king, bring small denominations in good condition, because change is scarce and tatty notes sometimes get rejected. Card machines and ATMs that accept foreign cards are unreliable, and in Los Roques there are no ATMs at all. Book through a local operator if you can, they sort the transfers, the domestic flights and the guides, and in a country this complicated that peace of mind is worth paying for.

Eating your way around

Venezuelan food is hearty, unpretentious and dangerously moreish. Breakfast means arepas, hot cornmeal cakes split open and stuffed with shredded beef, black beans, cheese or all three at once, alongside mango juice so fresh it's practically still on the tree. Lunch might be pabellón criollo, the national plate of shredded beef, black beans, rice and sweet fried plantain, or, on the coast, a whole fried red snapper with tostones, crunchy twice-fried plantain discs. Beach shacks do empanadas de cazón, crispy pasties filled with baby shark that taste far better than the description suggests, and fresh oysters with lime and hot sauce for pocket change. Don't skip the cachapas either, sweet corn pancakes folded over a slab of soft white cheese.

Sweet tooth? You're in the right country. Venezuela grows some of the most prized cacao on Earth, the stuff from Chuao commands silly money among chocolatiers, and the local coffee is superb. Finish it all with a glass of Venezuelan rum, which regularly wins international awards and costs a fraction of what you'd pay at home.

So, should you go?

Venezuela isn't a beginner's destination. You'll need a bit of planning, a sensible attitude to safety, and ideally a good local operator in your corner. But if you're the sort of traveller who values substance over polish, who'd rather have a world wonder to themselves than queue for it, Venezuela right now is extraordinary. Empty beaches that outclass the famous ones. Waterfalls, mountains, savannahs and jungle stacked into one country. Food that fills you up for a fiver. And people so pleased to see visitors that the warmth of it stays with you long after the tan fades. Go now, before everyone else figures it out.