Merida and Navidad

Merida is the biggest city in the Venezuelan section of the Andes. It lies in the valley between mountains and two rivers, so it boasts very dramatic, beautiful views. The safest city, Merida has a large student population and is known as the city with the most festivals. We read about some of them in our trusty Lonely Planet guide, and our favorite is "Paradura del Niño: Game in which villagers 'steal' the infant Jesus from his crib, then search for him and celebrate his 'finding', it's popular throughout the region for the entire month of January."

We spent four nights in Merida. We stayed in a little posada owned by a sweet grandmotherly lady, where we stayed in bunk beds. We've been getting used to cold showers, but in Merida, where it gets cold at night, cold showers were a little more intense than we like.

One of our favorite places in the city was the Heladeria Coromoto, a Guinness Book of World Records holder for the most ice cream flavors (about a thousand). The list was impressive and almost covered an entire wall. They don't have all the flavors available all the time, unfortunately, so we had to choose between about 40, poor us :). We each tried two flavors, Miriam had 'Dulce Vita' and 'Rosas' (Sweet Life, and Roses), and Gabe had 'Miss Venezuela' and 'Coco Chocolate' (Coconut Chocolate). They were all very tasty. Other titles include: Power Rangers, Diosa Venus (Goddess Venus), Guinness, Becks, Avocado, Meat, Rice with Chicken, American '92, Titanic, Love sweet love, and Passion Fruit.

One day adventure took us to the top of Pico El Aguila, a mountain 60km away from Merida. We expected it to take about an hour to get there. Instead, as the roads were all little zigzagging up and down mountains, it took us 3.5 hours. Although it took awhile, the views were amazing along the way, even we before we hiked to the top. After exploring the top, we went down the mountain a little ways to one of the mountain lagoons, Laguna Mucubaji. We were thankful to have arrived at the lagoon when we did, because half an hour later, a cloud came across and shrouded the entire area in thick, cold mist for the rest of the time we were there. As it was the 23rd, we unfortunately had a really hard time finding a bus that would pick us up to take us back to Merida. We ended up waiting an hour and a half in the cold for a bus, but none stopped. We finally realized that we had to try something else, or we weren't going to get back to Merida that night. So, we decided to hitchhike. We ended up getting picked up by a truck driver in one of the biggest tractor trailer trucks that we've seen in Venezuela, so it was very interesting and time consuming (even longer than the bus) to go back down all those little winding roads through all those tiny Andean towns in a massive truck. The driver was very nice, and we were just thankful to have made it back to Merida.

We ended up spending Christmas in Merida. First a note about Christmas in general in Venezuela. We found the ideology surrounding Christmas very interesting. As it is a more Catholic country, the religious aspect is more heavily emphasized, but it also includes more modern interpretations of Christmas: Niño Jesus (Baby Jesus) delivers presents on Christmas, but Santa Claus helps! So, when children write a letter to say what the want, they send it to Niño Jesus.
Another thing you'll realize if you spend time in Venezuela in December is that people set off fireworks all month leading up to Christmas. The government tries to regulate this by limiting the sale of fireworks to after November 15th, to keep the explosions to December. So, on Christmas eve and Christmas there are small fireworks going off all day and all night.
In Caracas, although we weren't there, apparently everyone rollerskates to church on Christmas!
In Merida, it was relatively low key, people went out with their families to the plazas, but went back in before midnight.
We spent Christmas Eve with some Turkish and Argentine travelers in our posada, with some traditional Andean liqeur (Crema Andina, a tasty Christmasy drink similar to kahlua, but unique to the area) and wine.

On Christmas day, we had some fruit and tried some Venezuelan Christmas sweets. We also took a walk around the city, as do many locals.

Later in the afternoon, we were driven to the top of another local mountain and went PARAGLIDING!!! Because the strength of the wind varied, our times in the air (there were three of us) were spread out over the afternoon. We flew tandem with a very experienced pilot (18 years), so our only responsibility was to sit down and enjoy the view. Gabe went first, when the wind was stronger, and went way out over the city. Miriam ended up going at dusk, and was able to see the moon right above her kite. By the way, the moon is oriented differently than we're used to seeing it, it's horizontal as opposed to vertical. Miriam thought it was going to be scary since she is generally not great with heights, but instead had no fear at all! Gabe loved the techno music that the guide played in his jeep on the way up and down the mountain (Miriam was not so impressed). It was a blast, especially since it was Christmas (we kept turning to each other and saying "We're going paragliding on Christmas!!").

The day after Christmas we left Merida on an almost 24 hour bus ride across the country to Ciudad Bolivar. We had heard that overnight busses were cold, so we brought our fleeces and wore pants. However, we were not prepared to the extent of cold that we experienced that evening. The first several hours were manageable, but at about 6pm, it turned arctic. We couldn't even sleep it was so cold, we had to regularly rub our arms and legs to keep them warm. The bus only stopped once, and when we got out it was sweltering out. Needless to say, we were very happy to get off that bus in Ciudad Bolivar this morning (the 27th).

We are now staying in the humid, colonial city of Ciudad Bolivar until we leave for Angel Falls (tallest waterfall in the world) on Tuesday!

Number of Americans seen: 0

Number of Westerners seen: 50ish