 |
Mérida from the teleférico
One of the highlights of Mérida was
the teleférico: the longest and highest tramway in the world. The town of
Mérida sits in a valley at about 7,000 ft, and the teleférico takes you
from that height up to about 14,000 ft. You buy a ticket at the base that
gets you to the third stop, then you can pay extra to ride to the top from
there. (I think this is a safety measure: if you pass out while walking
from the tram car to the ticket counter, they don't let you go any
higher.) The entire trip up takes about an hour. Everyone got out at the
third stop to hike around. The altitude wasn't as bad as I had expected,
though I did notice I couldn't walk uphill very far before needing a
break. Venezuela is quite noisy compared to what I'm used to, so one of
the nicest things about being up in the mountains was the quiet. We were
lucky to have a beautiful sunny day with very little cloud cover, so the
views were quite spectacular. Some of our group actually hiked up the
ridge from the third stop to the fourth and rode down, a gain of about
3,000 ft.
The first of four teleférico cars |
View at the
top |
| After a few days in Mérida,
half the group left to visit a national park near the city of Coro,
while the other half of us stuck around. Cathy had lived in Mérida
for a year and a half attending the University de los Andes, so she
had many friends in town. We ended up spending a lot of time with
two of them, Cesar and Diana.
This was probably the most
fun I had with Spanish on the entire trip. Diana knew a little
English, but neither of them could really understand what we were
talking about if we talked amongst ourselves. So out of courtesy and
the desire to include them when they were around, we used a lot of
Spanish. They, in turn, were patient and spoke slowly to help us
understand them. It was a great deal of fun. Diana taught me the
verb "to rock" in Spanish, specifically how to say "LET'S ROCK,"
much to the chagrin of the rest of the group. One afternoon Diana
invited the five of us over to her house and she, Cesar, and Cathy
cooked us an incredibly delicious dinner. We had visited an open
market just down the street to buy all the ingredients fresh.
Diana's house was interesting; the entry way and living room were
open to the elements (protected by bars but no glass). Only the
bedrooms and bathroom were truly indoors. |
Diana (pictured), Jason, and I spent the afternoon
sharing music. |
One night a few of us went to see a
movie. Most of the films I saw advertised in Venezuela were second- or
third-run American movies, in English with Spanish subtitles. We ended up
seeing a pretty cheesy American flick that was probably coming out on
video here at the same time we were watching it down there. Being an audio
junkie I immediately noticed the poor quality of the sound system.
Compared with your typical American theater it was very garbled and had a
lot of competition from the air conditioning. This made sense, though,
since the audience doesn't listen to the dialogue; they read it. It was
also interesting to note that while the particular film we were watching
had a lot of bad language, the Spanish subtitles replaced it with much
softer words ("god damn" instead of "f***"). We did see a poster for a
Venezuelan-produced film while we were there. It was about Simón Bolívar's
mistress or wife (I can't recall which), which would have been fascinating
but it hadn't been released yet.
For our final day in Mérida before
heading off to rejoin the group, Cesar and Diana led us on an expedition
to an area in the Sierra Nevada national park high in the Andes a couple
hours outside of town. It was absolutely gorgeous countryside. We were at
such a high altitude that the clouds were rolling rapidly across the
valley above our heads. From one second to the next it could be bright
sunshine or dim and cloudy, though fortunately it was sunny more often
than not. This area and the jungle easily ranked as the most picturesque
places we visited.
|
