Massimo's photoblog

No post for yesterday, since we really didn’t do much. All I can remember now is that we changed the tires of Mayli’s mother car, which is a quite old Century Chevrolet, not exactly in perfect shape. Apart for the tires waiting to explode (one in fact did explode a few days before we arrived), it also has a problem with the automatic shift: the forward shifts do not engage until the car is warm, so one typically need to start the car 15 minutes before it can actually use it. So we decided to rent a car for ourselves for a couple of days.

This morning we picked up the rented car at the airport. We got a Fiat UNO (it’s many years since I drove one of those) with a manual shift. The idea was to drive on some off-the-touristic-path secondary roads on the mountains around Merida. Since today we had only the afternoon free, we decided to go to La Azulita, a relatively small village north of Merida, towards the Lake of Maracaibo (of pirate’s fame). La Azulita is about the same height (on the sea level) than Merida, but to go there one has to climb to Jaji and then follow a mountain road that crosses the mountains. We have done this road a few years ago, and I remember it for passing through an imposing mountain rainforest. As you can see from the photo above (taken at the beginning of the road), the landscape is one of tree-covered mountains, each of them home of a full ecosystem of parasitic ferns and lichens (like the “barba de palo” hanging from the huge tree on the right).

What we didn’t know was the damage that a few years of rain and lack of service have done to the road. Once passed Jaji, the road started to climb, with the pavement getting thinner at each turn, until it disappeared altogether in a mixture of gravel and mud. Fortunately it was a few days since the last rain, so the mud was acceptable for our UNO, but a couple of times we had our doubts that the road was the one we remembered. At a particularly bad point the road ended abruptly in a grassy meadow: we didn’t notice the detour the curve before. There we found a couple of kids, pretending to “fix the road” shoveling fresh mud in the numerous potholes. After giving them a tip for the service, we had some thoughts of returning on our way, but then decided that probably the worst was over.

When we were again thinking that we were lost, surrounded by the forest and the occasional cow grazing on the side of the road, we found a little construction with the big sign “Mercal”, one of the government subsidized stores for basic goods. Well, if the Bolivarian Revolution arrived there, then we were probably on the right way to La Azulita.

Once in La Azulita we decided that we had enough of mountain roads for today, and drove down towards El Vigia, a town in the plains at the bottom of the valley of Merida, from which a highway brought us back to Merida. This highway is very good for venezuelan standards, and connects Merida with the airport of “El Vigia” at the bottom of the valley. This airport was supposed to replace the one insanely built in the center of Merida, that can only being served by small planes because of the shortness of its runway and the proximity of high peaks surrounding the city. Merida’s people however still prefer to land in the old airport and the new one is not very much used. The highway however is quite nice and well maintained: a big difference with respect to other “highways I saw int he country (a few years ago I saw the signs ”beginning highway“ and ”end highway" a few meters apart at the two ends of a bridge connecting two ill-maintained roads).

Of course we arrived much later than we promised to Mayli’s mother, but the trip was worth for the beautiful scenery of the lands we crossed.

Go to the next installment of my Venezuela travel diary.