Because we had scheduled a few days off and because we wanted to see a bit of Venezuela, Mary and I decided to set out for a road trip to the Andean city of Merida. We armed ourselves with maps and guide books, we solicited directions from knowledgeable persons in the embassy, and I studied Google Earth in an attempt to memorize the route. As dedicated readers of this blog know, we have a long history of getting lost on even the simplest of road trips. This time I was bound and determined that we would be well prepared. The good news is that, except for Barquisimeto, we did not get lost. I’ll tell you about Barquisimeto later.We set out at about 5:00 am in order to beat the ever present traffic that often extends to areas well outside of Caracas. The stretch of highway from Caracas through Maracay and then to Valencia is particularly bad for traffic since it is the main artery for truck traffic between Maricaibo, which is a big oil and manufacturing area, Puerto Cabello which is the main port facility, Valencia and Maracay (lots of manufacturing) and Caracas. Our plan worked and we sailed along finding out turn in Valencia and heading south into the region known as Los Llanos by about 8:00 am. I should also mention that I made a very important discovery on this road trip: my GPS works in Venezuela! It even has the overlay showing the principal roads in Venezuela. So not only did we not encounter any traffic to this point, we knew where we were at all times.
Heading south from Valencia the road rapidly deteriorated. Under the best of circumstances the roads in Venezuela are difficult. There are potholes in the middle of freeways, aggressive drivers, no signs and few traffic control devices. Every twenty miles or so there are toll booths, but no tolls to pay. Most of them are not even attended. The toll booths are simply relics of a bygone era when tolls were collected. Now they act as a sort of speed bump and commercial center since traffic is forced to slow down to pass through the lanes of the toll booth and all sorts of vendors gather to sell their wares to the slow moving traffic. There are also police check points at every town. These consist of a set of speed bumps, perhaps an orange cone or two and one or more police officers or Guardia National. Often the post is staffed by one person, lounging in the shade watching as traffic passes. At other posts, however, there are five or six well armed and stout looking officers aggressively inspecting vehicles. We always got waved on through, perhaps owing to the fact that we are two gringos with diplomatic license plates. But as we got farther into Los Llanos, the roads became decidedly third world. At one point, the highway disappeared altogether, becoming a dirt road that extended for several miles. In all fairness I should point out that there was some road construction involved, but in the U.S. there would have been at least some pavement on a road that is basically an interstate highway. Our traffic karma fell apart as well and we sat in a hellish traffic jam, on a dirt road, surrounded by huge dump trucks spewing out noxious black smoke for what felt like an hour or more. We were also really, really hungry. We overlooked packing food for the trip. I was so focused on not getting lost that I forgot about food. Unfortunately, there are very few places to eat along the road in Venezuela, and even fewer that you would actually want to eat at. Which brings me to a rather humorous story.
We started seeing signs for a place called Café Madrid. It appeared to be a five star rated restaurant, at least the five stars prominently displayed on the advertisements along the road seemed to indicate it was a five star establishment. As we approached each town we would see the sign advertising Café Madrid, but we never actually saw a Café Madrid. The signs often had the name of the town on them, indicating to us that there was a Café Madrid in the town we were about to enter. But, alas, our tummies continued to growl and the hunger continued unabated as we never actually saw a Café Madrid. We both wondered aloud, several times, where the elusive Café Madrid, the five star bistro advertised on so many roadside signs, might be located. They certainly did a lot of advertising for a restaurant so difficult to find. We gave up on Café Madrid and ate arepas filled with pernil (roast pork) at a very pleasant little roadside parador (that’s what they call roadside restaurants here). Later in the trip, while buying some pastries at a bakery, we discovered that Café Madrid is actually a brand of coffee. I happened to look at some items for sale on a shelf in the bakery and saw several bags Café Madrid coffee sitting on the shelf. That’s when I realized that each of the signs was really a “welcome to (name of town)” sign, sponsored by a brand of coffee much the same way that Coke-a-Cola or Pepsi might sponsor such a sign. Boy did I feel dumb!Along the way we also saw a lot of very helpful signs in front of buildings. For example, the sign that said “No Hay Aspiradora” (there is no vacuum cleaner ) provided a vital piece of information, as did the signs informing us that there was concrete, and that there were not concrete blocks. These signs were generally in front of houses. I’m still scratching my head.
Los Llanos is a very interesting area. For about half the year, during the dry season, it is hot and dry. There are vast praries of brown grass and parched trees dot the landscape. Then the rain comes and it rains relentlessly for about 6 months and suddenly the plains turn into vast marshes of reeds and tall, lush, green grass. We were there during the rainy season. I have also been to the Llanos during the dry season (see the blog about fishing at Lake Camatagua). I liked the rainy season better. We drove along through the plains in view of the Andes mountains to our right. It was a beautiful sight. We drove on Highway 5 through Tinaquillo, Tinaco, San Carlos, Acarigua, Guanare, and finally to Barinas. We then turned onto Highway 1 in Barinas and headed up into the Andes Mountains, through Barintas, Santo Domingo, Mucuchies and finally into Merida. The Andes are stunningly beautiful. We stopped briefly at a waterfall that cascaded down the mountains, and there would be many, many more waterfalls. At first the mountains were forest, which turned into Cloud Forest, then high mountain pines and, as we went over the pass, we were above the tree line and the only plants were short scrub brush and mosses. Here are a few photos:
However, as we drove through the Andes the road got progressively worse. Worse even than what we previously encountered in Los Llanos. In fact the roads became positively dangerous. There were places where a small landslide occurred and the road was partially blocked by a large mound of dirt that had obviously been there for quite some time because it was covered with grass and weeds. The road crews decided that it would be better to just paint some stripes on the road warning of the impending obstruction than to actually remove it. We saw fallen trees in the road and even several places where a whole lane of the road was washed down the mountainside. The solution? Paint a warning stripe or two on the road and leave the road washed out. The poor condition of the roads was, however, the least of the hazards we faced. Buses and trucks raced up and down the mountain roads, driving on the wrong side of the road, passing slower traffic (including us) and generally being maniacs. Then, with no warning at all, a bus would suddenly slow down and stop to pick up a passenger. Moments later that bus would run up on our tail flash its headlights then pass us. Head light flashing is an important form of communication in Venezuela. Depending on the context it could mean “get out of the way” or “you go first, I insist” or “danger: road washed out ahead” or “get out of my lane”. You never really know for sure, but when a bus is tailgating you flashing its lights it is a safe bet he means “get out of the way”. Despite all the hazards, challenges, trials and tribulations we covered 450 miles in 11.5 hours and never got lost. We drove into Merida and literally to the front door of the posada on the first try.
Merida is a lovely town. It is a colonial city and is known as “La Cuidad de los Caballeros” (The City of Gentlemen “caballero” literally means “horseman” but also means gentleman because only the landed gentry had horses.) I was told that it derived its name from the fact that it was a very prosperous town during the colonial era. Now, it retains much of its colonial character, but, like all of Venezuela, it suffers from the plight of the Venezuelan zeal to tear down beautiful old buildings and build new, ugly ones in their place. It is also a college town, and while we were there there were riots going on about a mile away. The people at our posada (Casa Del Sol), in the restaurants and on the street seemed completely unconcerned about the student riots, so we did not concern ourselves either. It was a little weird to dine al fresco while listening to sirens and the pop, pop, pop of tear gas canisters going off.
The next day we went up the Teleferico (Cable Car) up to the snow capped peak of Pico Espejo, one of the huge mountains in near Merida which is next to Pico Bolivar, the highest peak in Venezuela. The ride up took about 1.5 hours, with three stops. Merida sits at an elevation of about 5500 ft and the top of the Teleferico is at about 15,500, giving the mountain a vertical rise of about 10,000 ft. That is bigger than most of the mountains in Colorado. It is higher than Whistler in Canada. At 15,500, that was the highest I have ever been with my feet on the ground. The top of the Mountain was shrouded in fog, but we did get to see some snow, in Venezuela, in the summer (and yes, it is technically summer here in Venezuela because we are north of the Equator).
Women in Venezuela almost always wear high heels. Watching this woman struggle through the ice and snow on the mountain peak was quite amusing. Mary was wearing a pair of "Croc" sandals in the snow which was almost as amusing.We also met a woman named Andrea from San Francisco while waiting for the Teleferico, who we would run into several more times in the coming weeks during our various travels in Venezuela. We ate soup and arepas at a café at the top of the mountain, muffled our laughter when some guy leaned up against a freshly painted wall and came away with his backside covered in blue paint, then tried to non chalantly check to see if we too had blue paint on our butts and generally had a good time. Although the top was shrouded in fog, the next stop down was not and we were able to get out and walk around a little and see some of the amazing scenery above the tree line. Here are some of the photographs.
The next day we went to a little village high in the mountains called Jaji (pronounced “Ha-hee”) which is in a colonial village nestled in a very high mountain meadow. Along the way we stopped to take some pictures of a beautiful waterfall…and ran into Andrea. She was sitting there at the waterfall waiting for a bus to take her to Jaji. She had been on another bus but wanted to get off at the waterfall to look at it and take pictures and so she had to wait for the next bus to come to continue her journey. We offered her a ride, and set out once again. Here are photos of the waterfall.
I noticed while we were there that many of the shops sold statues of a man that looked a little like Charlie Chaplin. The statues depict a man in a black suit and hat with a moustache standing with his hand behind his back. I had also seen statues of this odd person in various roadside shrines (there are small shrines along the roads all over Venezuela and, indeed, all over Latin America) right along side statues of the Virgin Mary. The man is Dr. Jose Gregorio Hernandez, and he is part of a cult dedicated to worship of a mythical figure called Maria Lionza. More on this below. 
From Jaji we continued west across the Andes toward Azulita, heading for the other side near Lake Maricaibo. As we neared the divide, at what must have been at least 10,000 ft in elevation, we started to see lots of Holstein cattle, the dairy variety, in lush green pastures of very picturesque farms. We (and by “we” I mean “I”) took lots of photos in along the way, too many to post here, and frankly, too many for Mary. The drive seemed to take forever because of the winding mountain roads. While we did not cover a great distance, it took four or five hours to do it on the narrow mountain roads. At times the roads were in even worse condition than the roads up. (Is a theme emerging here? Something about bad roads?) We also got a little lost in Azulitas, but made a good recovery. Here is a photo of a wonderful waterfall just outside Azulitas. 
Before we left the posada, we asked the woman at the front desk if the road on the Maricaibo side of the mountain was good. She got a little indignant and said “claro, es una autopista” meaning “of course, it is a highway.” Well, she was wrong. Very, very wrong.
We descended down to almost sea level and got on the Autopista in Santa Elena, which was hot and humid. The Lake Maricaibo side of the Andes is what most people envision when they think of South America. In addition to the heat and humidity, there were banana trucks everywhere, the roads were lined with tropical plants, and there were pedestrians lining the road. We could not go five miles without coming to a new town, where we had to slow to a crawl behind the banana trucks. Even when we could go 50 or 60 miles per it was dangerous because of the potholes. I literally saw a car have a blowout after hitting a pothole while passing me. (Karma can be a bitch.) As the day wore on, and the miles crawled by we finally found ourselves in the mountains again as we turned back to the east, back toward Caracas. Now we were beset by a driving rain storm in addition to the trucks, pedestrians, potholes and towns. Darkness fell and we were no where near our goal of Barquisimeto. It was nearly 9:00 pm when we got to Barquisimeto, and neither of us had eaten since breakfast. Our navigational luck ran out as well and we got quite lost. Part of the problem was that we did not have a good map. After driving around in circles for nearly two hours and calling the posada several times, we finally broke down and hit a drive thru at a McDonalds. Little did we realize that we were about five blocks from our posada. We followed the directions we were given by the posada, did yet another circle around the town and finally arrived to our posada. By this point Mary and I were not speaking to each other.
Things got much better the next day. We found our way out of town with no problem (after a spirited debate between the posada manager, a cleaning lady and a grounds keeper as to which route was the “best” one to get to the Autopista). We set our sights on a small town called Chivacoa, which is home to the followers of Maria Lionza. Here are some links that explain the religion, which is a mixture of Catholicism, Voodoo, Santaria, and indigenous beliefs. Here. And Here. And Here. There is a mountain nearby (Sorte) that is said to be a place of strong magical power and is held sacred by followers of the cult. The town itself is full of “Perfumerias” which sell the necessary items for the practice of the religion, such as the statues of the various deities (The Virgin Mary, Dr. Jose Gregorio Hernandez, Simon Bolivar, Negro Pedro, Cacique, the Viking, The Ganster and, of course, Maria Lionza, who is depicted riding an animal called a tapir) as well as candles, incense, cigars, rum, playing cards, and small metal charms. Not wanting to miss out on a potential religion, we purchased a Dr. Hernandez statue and a Maria Lionza statue to go with the Virgin Mary statue we already have. After a quick lunch of pastries at a bakery (where I solved the Café Madrid mystery) we headed home to Caracas. The remaining drive was uneventful. I just zoned out and drove.
We drove over 1000 miles in four days, and spent about 30 hours in the car.
Coming up next: I become a rock star, and the Angel Falls Adventure.
