Hotel Gran Balcon Merida

... a few of the neighboring towns, tasted Venezuelan cuisine, saw the condor station where they are trying to reintroduce the Andean condors into the wild, and we enjoyed a gorgeous national park. What a good day. And guess what? I am about to get on a night bus out of here!!! Yes, I know... I have lost my mind! :) Goodbye Venezuela... Hello Colombia!

... to reopen. Despite our research before arriving we hadn't seen anything about it being closed, or from the locals we spoke to in Maracaibo, so we spent our first day in the town getting orientated. The next day we took an extreme mountain biking experience, which started about 35km from town in a village called Jaji. From there we climbed off road to the top of the beautiful mountain range nearby. Supported by a 4x4, the driver and a guide, Julie and I were the ...

... nature is very, very beautiful. Ah, and I found out how much a litter of gasoline cost in Venezuela - between 0.7-0.9Bolivares - less than 50cents!!!, less than bottled water. For real. *** I would definitely reccomend the agency that took me to Catatumbo: Guaguanco Tours. They are right at Plaza las Heroinas and do not rip you off: http://griffjon.com/host/Guaguanco/cont act.html. Ask to go with Eli - he is a truly nice and ...

... discover the town. We already had loved what we had seen. The town has a couple of universities here, so lots of young people and lots of cars that come with it unfortunately, which line the narrow streets like crazy. Merida stretches narrowly in the shadow of the mountains rising up beside it to a peak of 5,100m. Venezuela's highest mountain. Merida itself only sits at approx 1,300m. However we are thinking of taking the worlds longest and highest ...

... trips to the Angel Falls). I'm bypassing Caracas because I've got no reason to go there and and even the locals say its a shithole. Tomorrow's bus trip will be the longest non stop journey so far at a shocking 22 hours (with a cold and an MP3 player that only has 4 hours battery life this will be a toughy..if I'm lucky I might get to watch Rambo 1 for the 6th time). When I was buying the bus ticket a dodgy local fella started chatting to me (the usual, asking where I was going, did I ...

... like some kind of hebe. The colour scheme was similar to the Central Plateau. I was surprised to see hummingbirds. It took longer than we had thought but we finally got to Los Nevados and stayed at a very poorly built place with a beautiful view over a very steep valley (on which the tiny township perches precariously), and which included dinner and breakfast and - this rarest of things - a hot shower for $20. Hot water is fast moving to the top of my list of 'things ...

... Lauren, a really nice girl who has been living in Englnd for a while. We all loved it. The jumping was a bit much for the girls but they did the absailing off the waterfall down 93 feet!! Really cool but really tough! Other than this in Merida we were walking along and bumped into Vera and her sister!! Because of the camera there was some animosity between her and Sarah, we had an ice cream together but I ...

... would you rank this on a scale of 1 to 10?¨ ¨A five.¨ ¨A five, hey?¨ ¨Some people don´t even get to see it.¨ ¨Did you hear that Sara, 50% of people don`t even get to see it. This happens nowhere else on earth!¨ And sure enough, instead of being disappointed, we actually start cheering on the lightning like a pair of sad lightning groupies, sitting alone on the deck while the others continue to play cards. And in the absence of ...

Up early again this morning can you believe (are we really on holiday?) to get the first cable car up the mountains. Were supposed to leave Merida this morning but cable car shut Mondays and Tuesdays so this is first day we can go. The first 7.30 cable car eventually leaves just after 8am fortunately without the 100+ kids waiting to go up. This is the longest and highest cable car in the world ...

... out of town, and then up into the hills. Up and up we went, zig-zagging up the mountain, until, several miles past the point where I thought "ok, that´s high enough", we stopped and unloaded the gear. There were two instructors and two paragliders ("wings" to those of us in the know). I and the swiss guy would go up with the instructors (pilots?captains?skippers?) first, after which we would come to land at the same spot, then Andrea and the swiss girl would go ...