Advertisement
Published: September 16th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Unusal ice cream
Andy trying out cheese and tomato ice cream at the record braking Heladeria Hello Guys,
At the end of our last blog we had booked tickets to go to Merida, so following the 12 hour luxury coach journey we arrived in Merida.
Straight away you could tell that Merida was much more relaxed and a slower pace than Caracas. It was also cheaper than Caracas.
Merida is a town in the Andes with easy access to Sierra Nevada and hence nestled in between towering mountains. It is a university town and is much friendler than Caracas. Merida is much cooler than Caracas.
We stayed in Posada Montana our first night, a lovely colonial style posada and for about 12 pounds between us we had a double room with cable tv, our own bathroom and hot showers. Which is great, we have found in venezuela you dont always get hot water and often in some places at night the electricity and water is switched off.
First stop in Merida was to the world famous Heladeria Coromoto, where he hold the world record for the most flovours of ice cream, to name a few salmon, squid, trout and Bolognaise. We went for the less adventurous Orange flower, tomato, cheese and sweet
White water rafting
The start of our rafting trip tea.
We only stayed in Merida one night and then headed off on a tour to the Los Llanos. We piled into a 4wd with a german guy, a dutch guy, 2 Brazillians and an English woman who had lived in Venezula for 15 years. We headed over the Sierra Nevada through some beautiful scenery, after taking a diversion for an accident - which seem to be frequent in this area. We stopped in a town called Barinas to pick up 3 other people for our tour, which by chance was 3 girls from the UK who we had previously met in Los Roques!
After a long and bumpy ride we got to our camp for the night, an adventure posada. At the camp we went White water rafting, which was fantastic. I have never done it before and it got the adrenaline going, although we did jumping into the river off of some rocks and I think I looked more terified doing that than the rafting!
The next we headed into the Los Llannos, none of us quite realised how long the journey would take due to terrain, National guard passport checks and in some
Anaconda Hunting
Our nutter guides walking around bare foot in a marsh trying to poke a bloody big snake with a stick, I´ll never complain about my job again!! places poor roads. At 5pm we eventaully arrived at our camp in the middle of no where.
Straight away Manuel aka Steve Irwin and Oscar a local guide took us off in search of Annacondas! We all hung back while these 3 guys with just sticks and one with bare feet went poking around in a marsh, we all thought yeah they are never going to find one and also that they were nutters! The next thing they were jumping around and shouting and pulled out this huge 6m snake! I kept well away from it but Andy and the other blokes in the group all helped hold up this massive 100kg snake for a photo opportunity before letting it swim off into the night. It was supprisingly placid becuase if it really wanted to it could of kicked all of our asses!
The next day we set off in a boat with our guide on a saffari. It was great there were hardly any other tourists and we were the only boat out on the water, it is such an untouched and deserted place. The los Llannos are wetlands punctuated with rivers and dry areas with
Anaconda Wrestling
Getting to grips with a 6 meter 100kg snake, Easy Easy Easy Easy.
Ps sorry the photo´s naff but thats as close as I could get Sue to the snake. trees and dense low level vegetation. We saw so many different amazing birds, camans, pink river dolphins, Capybara - which are the worlds largest rodent, turtles, Pirranahs. It was such a great trip.
We then went on to to another river to try and catch Pirranah for dinner but we didnt have much luck. After siesta we then went off on horses, or more like old nags for a nice gentle trot as the evening was drawing in, again we say lots of birds and a few caman.
We had a great time other than the fact that we all seem to have been nibbled by mosquitos or some other annoying biting insect!
The next day, Thursday, we returned to Merida, again delayed by another accident on the windy roads throught he Sierra Nevada.
We stayed the night again at Posada Montana and had dinner with Gustavo and Gustavo the 2 Brazillians, it was funny as none of us really spoke each others language but some how we managed to have an interesting conversation in which we found out Gustavo number 1 was a security consultant for an insurance firm and Gustavo number 2 works
Giant Rodent
A capaybara grazing on the edge of the river with Cement and makes lots of money!. The Brazillian guys were so funny.
Today we have been up the cable car in Merida, it is the worlds longest and highest cable car. There are 4 different stations and the highest was about 4500m. Due to cloud we didnt see that much on top, but the air was very thin and we felt a little dizzy. Although we didnt see much on top the journey up and down gave fantastic views of the mountain ranges and the town of Merida below.
Tommorrow evening we are heading off on another overnight bus to the town of Valencia where we are getting a conection to Cuidad Bolivar from where we will start our Angel Falls and Roraima trips.
Just a note for you guys in the UK, petrol here is so damn cheap. It is 70 bolivares a litre, and there are about 4000 bolivares to the pound!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.071s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 13; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0377s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Liz & Steve
non-member comment
Wow
wow! it looks like your having a brilliant time! looking forward to your next instalment love the photos, take care both of you x