We strip and slide into a green algae-covered pool.Just down the road, Hacienda Bukare is a renovated cacao hacienda dating back to 1908. Billy Esser fell in love with the property about eight years ago and decided to convert it into a small hotel with four colonial-style rooms. He then turned his attention to the plantation, now up and running once again. The Dominicans introduced cacao to the Caribbean coast in the 16th century, spawning a whole new social class, los Grandes Cacaos (the barons who exported cacao to Spain from the small towns along the coast) The Paria Peninsula became known as the Chocolate Coast. Even now, many European chocolate makers seek out the superior Venezuelan bean.Billy suggests a trip to the early-morning fish market at the port of Rio Caribe, a sleepy little fishing village lined with squat one-storey houses painted in blues, yellow, green and pink.

From 6.30am, when the fishermen bring their catch and their rainbow-coloured boats onto the shingle, the quayside is a hive of activity: fish scales fly, pelicans strut along the shore scavenging for scraps. By mid-morning it’s peaceful once more.Claus Muller might be right to worry about the future of Paria, but the peninsula has a long way to go before it resembles the Caribbean islands just off its shores.Since the demise of the Venezuelan national airline, Viasa, the only airline with direct flights between the UK and Caracas is British Airways (0845 77 333 77, ). BA flies from Gatwick to Caracas three times a week from £660 for travel in April, May and June. If you go through the discount agent South American Experience (020-7976 5511, ), you can fly on Air France via Paris for £379 from eight UK airports.Journey Latin America (020-8747 8315, ) can arrange a 10-night itinerary, including the Paria Peninsula and the Angel Falls, for £1,899 per person including all flights, hotels, transfers and most meals and excursions.. “Inside passage” – in isolation, the phrase sounds indelicately surgical. Happily, the natural channel that threads along the coast of British Columbia turns out to be a celebration of the great outdoors.

“Inside passage” – in isolation, the phrase sounds indelicately surgical. Before you check in for a voyage through the wilderness, grab the atlas and check some dimensions. Vancouver Island, that comma curling casually from the southwestern Canadian mainland, is so large that – well, regress to classroom antics to demonstrate its size. Photocopy the island, cut it out and plonk it on the map of Europe at the same latitude. It obscures everywhere from the Black Forest to the suburbs of south-east London.Unlike those areas, the biggest island off the Pacific coast of the Americas is alive with the kinds of beasts that, back in primary school, were confined to picture books or cartoon strips.

Which is why, when the park ranger of Cape Scott provincial park pointed out a bear crossing the track ahead of us, I looked up expecting to see a Yogi Bear loping across on his hind legs. Instead, this creature lunged over the track on all fours and disappeared into a wilderness that has defied human attempts to tame it.Were access to Canada’s ultimate conclusion much easier, no doubt the beautifully blank beaches would be crowded with more than gulls and jetsam But this is tough country. I had met the park ranger while hitch-hiking on a logging track – his was the first vehicle for two hours. To the south of Vancouver Island, the highlight of the Pacific Rim national park is a rugged and beautiful seven-day coastal trail.