The Orinoco River was crossed by Bolívar

Hello friends, Simón Bolívar arrived to Carúpano, coming from Haiti, the last day of the year 1816. His worries will now direct him towards southern lands, towards the lands of the province of Guayana. Gone were the long months of pilgrimage from port to port, of unbridled sailing through the Caribbean Sea. No more boats and Antillean waters. From now on, for about 24 months, it will be the waters of the Orinoco and the mountainous lands of Guayana that will feel the presence of the hero.

His comrades in the fight had invited him to return to Venezuela and take charge of the Republican troops, and with this endorsement he was again in his native land, after almost two years of absence.

There were still misgivings in some members of the liberating officers regarding the leadership of Bolivar. However, knowing such apprehensions and the fragmentation of the patriotic troops, Bolivar is present again in Venezuelan territory, but this time his actions will be executed in a different scenario to that of the province of Caracas. Several defeats had suffered in this province because of his stubborn effort to try to take the capital and expel the royalists from there. Such defeats then induced him to change the scene of the confrontation. The liberation of his beloved Caracas had to be postponed.

An invitation from Manuel Piar to come to Guayana was what led him to look towards the Venezuelan south, at a time when the situation of fragility of the republican weapons was very evident due to its dispersion and fragmentation in numerous bodies, as well as in reason of the manifest quarrels among their military leaders. Before the imminent danger that was approaching Barcelona, El Libertador left this city on its way to Guayana on March 25, 1817.

He was accompanied by a small number of collaborators. The distance that separated it from the Angostura was just over 400 km. The small group traveled in thirteen days, not without facing several traps of realistic games hidden to El Libertador remained in the province of Guayana until the 7th of that same month. But the parliament with Piar lasted a few hours of that same day of the meeting, since both men separated each one to fulfill different tasks. In those brief hours together, the two men reviewed the troops, in addition to addressing issues specific to the war in which Venezuela was involved.

Bolívar, on the other hand, would go over the Orinoco this time through Angosturita, a place located just below the capital. He was on his way to Aragua from Barcelona but on the way he received the news of the victory obtained by Piar in San Felix and decided to return. Again crossed the Orinoco at the height of the river Aro. This happened on the 27th of that month of April. Soon, on the 2nd of the following month, General Manuel Piar and the Supreme Chief met. That same day the Caraqueño received from the hands of the curazoleño the troops of the victorious army in San Felix. At that precise moment, while Bolivar began a long cycle of fortunate events for Piar began the time of its irremediable decline.