Venezuela Holidays Explored

Picture a morning on a Caribbean cay so pale it echoes the Maldives, an afternoon at the foot of Angel Falls, and a night in a hammock with howler monkeys overhead. All three fit inside a single Venezuelan itinerary. The country packs that much range into one trip, and just now it stays wonderfully uncrowded.

From boom, to bust, to a quiet comeback

Some history helps a visitor read the place. Oil money had made Venezuela the richest nation in Latin America by 1970, and that wealth pulled in a jet-set crowd. Caracas hummed with new hotels, charter flights reached Margarita Island from Europe, and trekking parties were already pushing into Canaima to see Angel Falls. Then the 2010s came and everything came apart. Hyperinflation, shortages and political turmoil hollowed the place out.

The arrival figures trace the fall. Around a million visitors came in 2013; four years later the count had dropped to barely four hundred thousand. Hotels shut, airlines pulled routes, and millions of Venezuelans left. The past few years have brought a change. The economy has partly dollarised, so prices quoted in dollars hold steady, and everyone from posada owners to boat captains takes them without fuss. Flights are trickling back. Guesthouses have reopened in Canaima, Morrocoy, Mochima, Margarita and Los Roques, and official numbers put foreign arrivals at about 1.25 million in 2023. Vloggers and backpackers who came out of curiosity have spread the word, and guests tend to leave converted. Our first morning in Canaima, a boatman named Jesús handed us cold mango slices while he gunned the outboard upriver.

A country of outrageous variety

Look at a map and the range shows itself. More than two thousand kilometres of Caribbean coastline runs along the north, the Andes lift in the west with their misty páramo and snow-dusted peaks, and Los Llanos floods each year with wildlife. Head south for Amazon rainforest, then the Gran Sabana, a rolling golden savannah studded with tepuis, the flat-topped mountains that inspired both The Lost World and Pixar's Up. The Orinoco Delta spreads into a watery maze of jungle channels. Most countries would be thrilled with one of these. Venezuela holds all of them.

The beaches, and blimey, what beaches

Begin with Los Roques, an archipelago of some 350 cays and islets about 160 kilometres off the mainland, protected as a national park since 1972. Sand the colour of bone runs underfoot, the water shifts through seven shades of turquoise with the light, and snorkelling visibility reaches absurd distances. Gran Roque, the only inhabited island, is a sandy-streeted fishing village of brightly painted posadas, with no cars and no resorts. A boat carries you to a different cay each morning: Francisquí with its triple sandbar, or Cayo de Agua, where a slender strip of sand links two islands and the coral gardens are world class. Nurse sharks cruise through waist-deep water as if it were nothing.

Morrocoy National Park is the easier win, four hours from Caracas by road. Cayo Sombrero is its star, a near-perfect circle of white sand and palms ringed by glassy, swimmable sea. Tucacas and Chichiriviche serve as jumping-off points, and the waterfront shacks grill whatever fish came in that morning.

The central coast road down through the cloud forest of Henri Pittier National Park to Choroní is worth the trip alone. One minute you're in dripping green jungle thick with the smell of wet earth, the next the Caribbean glitters below. Playa Grande is the lively local beach, all music, rum and fried fish, while a short boat ride away sit 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 beneath the palms.

Margarita Island remains the old favourite, with its long curve of golden sand at Playa El Agua, the surf at Parguito and knockout sunsets over Juan Griego bay. Further east, Mochima National Park 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 want to get away from everyone, La Tortuga sits out in the Caribbean, barely developed and blindingly beautiful.

Beyond the beach towel

A month on the coast alone would be easy, but the interior deserves at least a week. Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site bigger than Belgium, holds Angel Falls, which drops 979 metres off the edge of Auyán-tepui, so high that much of the water turns to mist before it lands. You fly into Canaima village, stay in a jungle lodge beside a rust-red lagoon, and head upriver by motorised dugout 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 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. Those stilt houses gave the country its name, since early explorers thought the place 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.

Dollars in cash are king, so 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 that peace of mind is worth paying for. A good operator will also know which posadas have the best cooks, which matters more than you'd think.

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, 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 rewards a bit of planning, a sensible attitude to safety, and a good local operator in your corner. If substance matters more to you than polish, and you'd rather have a world wonder to yourself than queue for it, the country right now is extraordinary. Empty beaches that outclass the famous ones, waterfalls, mountains, savannahs and jungle stacked into one destination, food that fills you up for a fiver. And people so pleased to see visitors that the warmth stays with you long after the tan fades. The morning ferry from Chichiriviche to Cayo Sombrero leaves at nine.