I arrived early at the center and the docks of Chichiriviche. I waited together with Lucas, a back packer from Poland for one hour before the first tourists came to negotiate a tour. My driver negotiated with two couples and signaled to Lucas and me that the negotiations were successful and that we would be leaving. I was on board of the boat and we left for Cayo Sombrero. I took the camera out of my bag and wanted to take some pictures of the departure but nothing worked. I did not check the batteries, I knew they were full. I checked the memory card and it was not there again. I had taken it out yesterday again to copy the pictures onto the notebook and had forgotten again to put it back. I had to go back.

My driver looked at me very surprised, but by now he had understood my technical problem and took me back to the village. He knew that I just went to pick up the memory card and would be back after about ten minutes. He would wait for me today and offered again to take me for free on the next tour. A nervous man turned up, knowing that he was late, like me. He introduced himself and asked about my intentions. He was from Peru and followed his hobby snorkeling in various parts of the Caribbean. He had been in the Nacional Park Morrocoy several times before and wanted to go to the island Cayo Sombrero. Time passed and it was now close to 11:11 and he came back to me to ask if I could not pay a small amount so we could leave. I agreed.

Although we were running quite late we arrived at Cayo Sombrero and still found an empty island, empty beaches and empty beach bars. The island was beautiful, the perfect size for a private island, two beaches, one towards the main land and more calm and one towards the open sea and more windy.

I walked to the end of the calm beach and managed to walk through and around the mangroves to the windy beach on the other side. I was thirsty and went to the only beach bar open to have a drink.

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Together with some other beaches that I had seen on this journey, both beaches of Cayo Sombrero would easily win five stars. The beach towards the sea had more wind and the only beach bar that was open, I was alone, the beach was empty, a broken plastic chair underneath a palm tree seemed, alone and empty and I took advantage and sat down.

I managed to sit still for maybe one hour, but then I had to get up again to do something. I walked to the other end of the islands and saw my Peruvian friend snorkeling in the distance. He had explained to me about a small passage to get to the reef and find a different underwater world full of sea life. He was a passionate snorkeler, all by himself the whole day. He seemed calm, not like me.

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The day passed and the agreed pick-up time came closer; Lukas and the Peruvian appeared and we waited for our driver to come. He was late and that forced us three gringos to have kind of a small conversation. Yes, we could have a conversation, but each of us was in his own world, in his own project, very individual and introverted, yet educated and respectful. I chose to discuss the situation of Venezuela and the upcoming elections. I was actually very curious to find out what will be the outcome of the elections and the reaction of the population. I had hit the nerve of the Peruvian and his answer was thirty minutes long, the whole way back and all the way to my car.

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