Home to the best guesthouse in the entire world!!

Trip Start Nov 01, 2006
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Venezuela  ,
Monday, January 21, 2008

So after officially the coldest bus journey we have ever experienced we arrived in Merida and oh what a shock. It's lovely (which means compared to the rest of Venezuela it's a beautiful paradise!). It's green and surrounded by National Parks, the street are clean and you almost feel safe at night. Well we did feel safe until a French guy who now lives there told me that there had been nearly 400 murders just in Merida last year. We picked a guesthouse out of the book (Guamanchi) and headed there from the bus station. It's a really nice place, cheap with a great roof terrace with hammocks. But there was another place that I had my eye on from the 'splurge' section of the guidebook, Casa Sol, but we weren't sure if we could afford it. So we settled into a few days of exploring the town, checking out what trips where available and of course checking out the food. It was just by our guesthouse that we discovered the best burger. Costing just over a quid, this was a triple decker spectacular which included the genius addition of fries in the burger Sunny day
Sunny day
 . Heavenly. Because the strange money situation in Venezuela (you can't take any money from the ATM as you would only get half what you would changing dollars in the street) we couldn't really afford any tours, which was a pity as they looked well organized and we really wanted to go paragliding. So we decided we would have to come back on holiday with our pockets full of US dollars and live like kings.
The best way to live like a king in Merida is to check into Casa Sol, the nicest place we've stayed so far in South America. It's a beautiful guesthouse that has been put together with so much care, the beds are really comfortable and there are so many places to chill out in and around the house and garden. We stayed 2 nights and I would recommend it anyone.
Sadly though it was soon time to leave as we were rapidly running out of US dollars, so we headed north ready to cross the border into Columbia/ This time our overnight bus wasn't the coldest, just the noisiest! The bus left at 9pm and they put on a 6 in 1 dvd of war movies, started with Black Hawk Down dubbed in Spanish. They did turn it off eventually but until way after midnight. Then at 5am we arrived at Maracabio bus terminal only to jump straight on another bus to take us the 5 hours to the border. After numerous police checks, an easy border crossing and another bus journey we arrived in Santa Marta completely exhausted, but with a new friend Anthony from Germany with us.
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