Hotel Paramo La Culata Merida

It's been a while since we have said hello, so I will divide the entry into two blogs. We are currently resting in Merida after a couple of weeks of almost non-stop activity. After a 30 hour trip from Ciudad Guayana, we arrived in Merida late in the evening and in the middle on Carnaval and Festival of the Sun (oops!). This university town nestled in the Andes was hopping! This is a vacation destination for locals during this timeframe, and we were ...

... we paid for everything by credit card, which would have been really bad as they add on between 8% and 14% for every transaction. The other problem would have been that many places, including the bus companies only take cash. Anyway, we have had to swallow it and move on. The cash machines also ask for the first or last 2 digits of your personal identification code, it took us a while to work out that this meant passport number for foreigners and citizen number for ...

... a few cities and towns I eventually reached my destination of Merida. A town nestled at the foot of the final anchor of the mighty Andean mountain chain. The town itself was a bit of a disappointment, save the world famous ice cream shoppe with 900 flavours (a Guiness record, I had a triple scoop of beer, hamburger and tuna. Yup absolutely disgusting), but the surrounding area was great, filled with more alpine splendor. I ...

... out with 3 jumpers, woolen hats and scarves with mountain jackets, looking and telling me Iīm mad to go with a sweater and my rain jacket. Luckily it was sunny at the top, but still very chilly. It took 2hr to go up by cable car and you stop at 4 stations to aclimatise to the altitude. Being the worldīs hightest cable car system it was impressive and amazing scenery. I was relieved to discover that apart from being breathless the altitude didnīt affect me much - so Iīm ...

... New Years in Merida" etc...It seems like on any special occasion cars serve as a communication medium...During the elections for the reforms they showed "Si" or "No"...during Xmas it was "Feliz Navidad". In the earily evening I decided to hop off the car at Valera...and with some luck, managed to get on to an unofficial bus back to Caracas. I hardly slept again but this time because the guy next to me kept on infringing on my space with his arms and legs ...

... of the sky purple and almost orange. It looked like it was building for something big. Alan said what was coming were Freddy Krugers, ie horizontal bolts branching like claws. But then the rain came back with a vengeance which apparently stymies this phenomenon. Still it was a pretty good storm, and we stayed up watching it until it got light when the storm peters out. Congo On the way home we drifted through the main street of the stilt-village ...

... man aus dem boot faellt, wird nicht uebersetzt...). wir sind aber furchtlos und setzen uns mit den anderen ins schlauchboot. die fahrt ist sehr abwechslungsreich: wirklich reissendes gewaesser, erstaunliche vegetation am ufer, kuehe und spektakuleare landschaft. angenehm angestrengt kommen wir nach fast einer stunde fahrt und zwoelf kilometer weiter unten am fluss an und werden zurueck in unsere unterkunft gebracht. dort geniessen wir wiederrum eine absolut geniale aussicht ...

... a swim in the town. But, the water has to be dirty right? No? Our boat driver informs us that itīs not dirty, itīs actually really clean. He even puts a glass beer bottle in the lake, filling it with crystal clear water as proof. Convinced, I hop in, racing kids from stilted house to stilted house. Witnessing what a great time Iīm having, Sara decides to join me. She changes into her bathing suit and is about to take the ...

... Caribbean Sea action and the main reason why we started this trip in Venezuela as Lea wanted to get in some serious sunbathing because she did not want to meet my family in Chile without the benefit of a healthy glowing tan. I hope I like it as I'm not much of sunbather and get bored easily on the beach. Plus I really loved Merida and the Posada we stayed in. The Los Llanos tour made me appreciate it even more. Still the Caribbean is supposed to be awesome so I'm still looking forward to it.

The never ending journey................still in our merry little band - Nicho, Paul, Rob and me.................the 18hr bus trip from Ciudad Bolivar to Merida turned into 26hrs due to some interesting approaches to single lane bridges (traffic goes one way for 1.5hrs and then the other way for 1.5 hours) add to this accidents and roadworks, and you have some very unhappy travellers whose bums are threatening to leave them for good! After a day recovering the feeling in our bums we ...