In 1498, on his third voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus made his first and only landing on the mainland of South America. This happened at the eastern tip of the Península de Paria, in what is now Venezuela. Not a lot has changed in the last 507 years. Paria is still astonishingly wild and undeveloped. Beyond the occasional town and road, this rainforested, mountainous region remains as Columbus witnessed it.
There are no motorways, golf courses, fast food restaurants or hotel resorts. Some villages are accessible only by sea. Nightlife is non-existent, apart from the nocturnal animal variety. The serene silence is broken only by the sound of birds, frogs, cicadas and palm fronds rustling in the wind. You can have a whole beach to yourself. This place is, for the moment, largely unspoilt and unvisited.
Paria's 80-mile-long peninsula points eastward like a gnarled finger towards nearby Trinidad. Mostly national park wilderness, it's a gigantic open zoo and botanical garden.
In Caracas, I exchanged a transatlantic 777 jet for an 11-passenger Caravan turbo prop. This gnat-sized, propeller-driven plane flew me onwards to the tiny provincial airport at Carupano, on the Caribbean coast. It was a thrilling arrival. The plane dives steeply from above the mountains and glides down on to a postage stamp-sized runway, pulling sharply to a halt just yards from the sea.
I was greeted by my guide, Billy Esser. He organises local nature treks and runs a small, exquisite posada (guesthouse), Hacienda Bukare in the mountains above the seaside town of Rio Caribe.
The hacienda is a working cocoa plantation. The main building - whitewashed and red-tiled - dates back to 1908. It is beautifully restored, with stone floors and lacquered cane ceilings. The dining area and bedrooms overlook a pretty manicured garden with a small pool, bordered by an unusual species of hibiscus that changes colour during the day - from white to pink to red.
Immediately beyond the garden lies untamed jungle on one side and cocoa groves on the other. Both teem with wildlife, not all of it friendly.
Before coming here, it hadn't dawned on me that I'd be staying in chocoholic heaven. High quality chocolate is made up of 60-70% cocoa solids. Bukare's is nearly 90%. Some is sold as handmade, mildly sweetened bon bons. The rush from the intense bitter chocolate flavour was ecstatic, almost like being high.
Billy's family also run a sideline in licor de cacao, made from roasted cocoa beans and rum. The matured liqueur has a wonderfully warm, velvety, rich chocolate flavour. Quality control is still a bit uneven, with some bottles better than others. The good news is that it is inexpensive and exported (check out bukare.com for details).
Opening my bedroom balcony door on my first morning, I stepped straight into a scene from a David Attenborough nature programme. Huge turquoise butterflies hovered a few feet from my face. Iridescent green lizards scampered along the veranda railings. Minuscule red-breasted humming birdsa with unbelievably long, needle-like beaks, sipped nectar from gargantuan hibiscus flowers.
Nearby Playa Medina is the main beach in the region, a half-mile long, palm-fringed cove with golden sand. It was quite busy by local standards - there were 15 people here. Too busy for us so we headed off along dirt trails to the Playa Chaguaramas where there were just three boys fishing, plus Billy and me. The five of us had over a mile of virgin Caribbean coastline to ourselves. I wandered to the far end of the beach and stripped off, completely. The birds and fish took no offence. With the surf high and wild, I rode the waves until sunset.
South of Hacienda Bukare is the Turuépano national park - a vast, Everglade-like swampland, criss-crossed by canals. En route, we passed through the small town of Tunapuy where a religious icon shop sold garish plaster statues of the Virgin Mary, Simon Bolivar and, for some inexplicable reason, assorted Viking warriors. Viking worship in Venezuela? There must be a rational explanation but I was unable to discover it.
Two hours later, we arrived at a remote village and transferred to a small dinghy powered by a putt-putt outboard motor, with a boulder on a rope for an anchor. Our watery journey started in a river but soon diverted along a narrow canal that cut through dense jungle. We ducked and dived to avoid hitting low branches and getting entangled in thick tresses of Spanish moss - here known as English beard - which hung from every tree. There are said to be caimans, fresh-water dolphins, manatees, otters and piranhas in these canals, but they must have been having a siesta because we didn't spot any. But when we diverted into a large waterway, Caño Ajies, we were rewarded with the sight of large flocks of flaming red scarlet ibis.
Arriving at Boca Grande delta, just beyond the northern fringes of the Orinoco basin, we anchored in the shallows and jumped overboard into the swirling mix of fresh and salt water, collecting handfuls of velvety, grey mud from the delta bed. Full of minerals, it makes a great face pack. We returned to the hacienda looking five years younger.
The Guacharo caves were first documented by Alexander von Humbolt in his 1799 expedition, but getting there made the M25 seem almost civilised. Crossing the mountain pass at 1,000m, thick cloud cut our visibility to almost zero. A bit further on, landslides forced us to detour off the road on to dirt tracks through the jungle. We were compensated for our bumpy ride with a great view of the so-called red mountain - its slopes swathed in vermilion flowering grasses.
The main cave is 11km long, and home to a colony of 18,000 guacharos, a nocturnal species which navigates by sonar. They make a hideous guttural sound, like an old man with a heavy cold clearing his throat. Not surprisingly, predators keep their distance.
The inside of the cave is exactly as it has been for thousands of years, with no walkways, hand rails or lighting. After 250m, it was pitch black, but our guide carried a small gas lamp. We entered a cathedral-like chamber, studded with 6m stalagmites and stalactites. The calcite content makes them glitter, like huge jewelled fingers. After 400m, we came to a small pool. Tiny fish darted. Crabs and millipedes scurried over mounds of guano sprouting small plants. How can life exist in this total darkness?
Squeezing through a long, low crevasse we emerged into a new chamber, and discovered a ribbed "piano" stalagmite. Tapping the ribs, they each ring a different note. I tried a rendition of the Internationale. It must have been passable because a voice from out of the distant darkness shouted: "Viva compañero!" His greeting echoed around the chamber.
Soon after emerging from the cave at dusk, a thunderous flapping of wings broke the jungle silence as the first flocks of guacharos flew out in search of dinner. A cue for us to snack on some of Billy's home-made bollos - boiled corn dumplings stuffed with vegetables and cheeses.
On my last full day, I hiked up Cerro Humo (smoke mountain), so-called because its 1,350m peak is almost always covered in puffs of smoke-like cloud. A paradise for botanists and bird-watchers (Venezuela hosts over 1,300 bird species), the mountain is also alive with sloths, armadillos, howler monkeys and brilliant blue morpho butterflies with 15cm wingspans.
My verdict? Paria peninsula is untamed nature, up close and personal. But it may not last forever, so get there and see what Columbus saw - before some greedy fool tarmacs and commercialises paradise.
Getting there: Journey Latin America ( 020-8747 8315, journeylatinamerica.co.uk) offers tailor-made tours to Venezuela. Prices start at £1,145pp for the Paria peninsula, including international and domestic flights, transfers, seven nights' accommodation and most meals. A four-day extension to the Angel falls costs an additional £550, including flights from Caracas, accommodation and all meals. Hacienda Bukare +294 808 1505, bukare.com.
Further information: Venezuela Tourist Office (020-7584 4206, venezuelatuya.com).
Time difference: GMT -5hrs. Country code: 00 58.
Flight time London-Caracas: 12½hrs (via Paris or Frankfurt).
£1 = 3,914 Venezuela bolivares.