Merida mountainous life and a broken cable car

---

Tim Version:
* Enjoyed Merida for its laid back atmosphere with a slight political student lifestyle edge to it.
* Visited thermal hot springs, saw some incredible graffiti, learned more Spanish... and I think I experienced altitude sickness!

The version that is sitting back drinking a Solera Verde in a colder mountain climate, trying desperately to understand Spanish conjugations again:

Merida is a town up in the Andes region, fairly close to the border with Colombia. To me is sounded like a good place to escape the pollution and humidity of the rest of Venezuela. Home of the world famous longest cable car, currently broken, I originally planned to go there to ride that, see the Catatumbo lightning, and do some trekking! My plans however changed greatly once there.

After Roraima and Angel Falls (Salto Angel) my body was a bit battered and sore. My knees hadn't recovered much from Roraima as they didn't get any rest at Angel Falls. My feet after walking very stupidly for half a day in slightly soggy socks still had blisters that while not sore were still not a good thing and I wanted to let them heal. These combined made the idea of hiking a whole lot less appealing.

A good hostel to stay at is Pousada Alemania. The cheapest place I found, for a dormitory at least, and its got good helpful friendly stafff, free internet and wifi, a kitchen, TV, its all there. They had a bunch of tours they offered but none really peaked my interest... the Catatumbo Lightning tour included a whole bunch of other stuff that I didnt want to do or see and there was no groups going anyway. I looked into going by myself but after speaking to others in town I decided to leave it for another trip as they said this time of year can be not so good for it (as in no lightning for days), and with its strength waining in passing years anyway there was no guarantee of seeing it in a few days. This all pointed to me needing to come back without a time limit, perhaps when I visit Colombia on some future trip eh? Los Llanos, now thats appealing! It was however identical to the Pantanal and I've seen that... so, time to chill =)

I met up with a couchsurfer who very kindly showed me around town, and we spent one of the nights out testing out the nightlife in Merida, which I gotta admit is pretty good! Managed to spend a whole night out without hearing any Reggaeton in the bars/clubs! Heh outside, booming from people's cars, now thats unavoidable...

Near the end of my time there I thought I had the chance to try Ayahuasca when another dude in the hostel said he was going back to try another ceremony with the trippy vine, and he had already tried it multiple times with this particular Shaman so it was safe. Unfortunately on the day we were meant to go we still hadn't heard back from the Shaman and his friends that we really needed to make a group didn't show up until too late. On top of all that when we thought ah hell we'll just go anyway, the bus we were meant to catch was broken down, then drove off once we thought it was fixed without anyone in it, and no replacement had arrived in more than 30 minutes - I took this as a sign that it wasn't meant to happen! I still want to try it in Peru though... I can't say I'm interested in the Shamanistic side, but I am interested in the inner reflection and soul searching side while having someone watching over the safety of your health, and this the Shaman does.

Other than that I started reading Spanish, learning past tenses, and chilled, something I am getting very good at doing with much less of a guilty feeling that Im not running around seeing everything I possibly can than previously in this journey. We (myself and the couch surfer) did also go to the hot Thermal Springs and I got my first taste of what I believe to be altitude sickness! Its about a 2 hour bus ride then another 30 minute walk to the springs, and there were a bunch of local kids having a swim when we arrived. To find them I dont think they had any other name than "Aguas Termales" but they are at a place with a name similar to Mucio. They weren't built up much and had a very natural feel which was awesome, and the entry charge to the propert is a whopping 1 bolivar fuerte, nothing much. While it was warm, it wasn't roasting in the pool, but the water coming out of the mountain is boiling! My host was asying that if you stick an egg under where the water exits the rock, you can boil an egg! Thts pretty damn hot.

What else in Merida... in general its just a nice place to walk around. I saw most of the town on foot and the graffiti can be incredible. Both insanely good artictically, and very intelligent and socially aware. With social messages, political messages, and sometimes just train trippy pictures, its worth spending half a day just wandering the streets. The pro and anti Chavez stuff is interesting too, as well as a giant piece fighting for animal rights and the stopping of the bull fights in the local arena, something I strongly support and was really happy to see =) I also met some student of the English language and got to chat with them and some others at the university for a while, while enjoying a free lunch through a lie that I was invited to the school to appear in their English class heh. The struggle that these guys have to get currency other than the Bolivar is disgusting. One wanting to go to Trinidad to practise his English as a bit of an internship basically was having to buy all his money on the trip from tourists and the black market as the Chavez government won't allow him to gain US dollars or other currencies through legal means, fucking ridiculus.

I also go to try the famous ice cream store that has all the utterly ridiculus flavours like "meat", "potato", "salmon" and really any other flavour you can think of that probably shouldn't be in ice cream! It did however also have delicious normal flavour too, where I had a flavour that related some show about young turtles kinda like the ninja turtles that was a childrens program here and it was great! I almost tried the flavour with Corn Flakes in it with what looked like mint as I thought of my Dad and his Kellogs Cornflakes addiction when I saw it, but the minty part turned me right off heh.

After chilling a week or so in Merida it was time to leave Venezuela! I had changed my flight to leave 1 week earlier than originally planned as I had no other plans for here and there is so much I want to do in the next part of the trip! In Venezuela I've been having bad luck with buses so thought I'd play it safe and went with the big company Expresos Occidente at a time that had other buses leaving before and after it, as I couldn't afford not to get to Caracas... still, the bad luck followed me!! We broke down some time around 6am with a flat tyre, already running about 2 hours behind schedule (its about 12 hours from Merida to Caracas). Tools, the right ones - we didn't have em! Nothing new here... the bus, a great piece of machinery. The tools, random bits of bent metal. For hours they tried to undo the nuts on the tyre but no luck. They kept on getting larger and larger metal poles to allow more people to help try and break the nut to undo it, borrowed from trucks passing by and eventually from town via a moto taxi but nothing. It wasn't until around 9am that they finally got it undone, and 9:30 we were underway again. No toilets on board for number 2's, no stops for food except at a very awkward time of midnight, and a bus full of unhappy Venezuelans. Why mention the unhappy Venezuelans? They are passionate - about what they love, and very much about what they hate. Some things screemed at the driver I am very glad I didn't understand. The reaction of the driver was also equally dramatic, the fights all seeming like both parties believe there were a film crew and a crowd watching them - I know understand very well why they make such famous daytime soap operas! - arms flailing, whailing cries like at a funeral, and joy like everyone had just won the lottery when the tyre was fixed. Instead of arriving at 7am we arrived at 2pm, and all I had time to do was shoot to the Airport in a taxi, heh well kinda "shoot"... the taxi I got was really old and couldn't go above about 50km/hr so it was a slow scenic drive! Awesome guy though, 62 years old, telling me all about Caracas on the way there pointing out sights, showing me where he lived in one of the Barrios (like a Favela). Man, Caracas... definitely far more poverty than Rio when it comes to the Barrios. They are endless! Its such a shitty sad thing to see coz unlike Rio there doesn't seem to be nearly as much wealth here, so where the money may come from to help those in Poverty is a mystery and to rehouse those who want in newer better quality government housing with more facilities is more than a mammoth task.

My flight to Peru, on time, thankfully no drama like the bus! I also found someone to sell my Bolivars too and got a good rate equal to what I bought them at by buying Euros instead of US dollars - think of doing this when leaving Venezuela! US dollars they want so to buy them back can be rates from 6 to 6.5 Bs to the dollar, not very good. Euros on the other hand you can buy with Bolivars for about the same rate that you buy US dollars with!! So enter with US dollars, change to bolivars, then leave by changing to Euros and change them in another country to your desired currency. There was however one wailing, crying, flailing girl from Japan near our gate going at it for a good hour. She was surrounded by police, security, health officials and others of authority but I never worked out what all the fuss was about. The levels of drama that people can reach never ceases to amaze me, and as a pretty laid back sometimes too laid back kinda person I wonder if anything coulod every raise me to some of the levels that I have seen...

Up and away I got my private TV screen again, thankyou LAN, and a good meal and was on my way to Peru! I wasn't so much looking forward to Peru but I am now so the timing has been perfect. Huacachina sand boarding, Islas Balletas wildlife, Nazca Lines, sandboarding the biggest sand dune on the planet, its all coming up, and thats within less than the first week =)

---

Photos

Near the thermal hot springs
About 3000m up I think