To Caracas again
Tuesday, December 28. 2004
Merida, Venezuela (Dec 28, 2004)
As any good thing, our vacations are getting to their end. This morning we left Merida to go back to Caracas, where we will stay just one day to fly back to freezing Boston. We flew again with one of the small companies that serve the route between Merida and Caracas, and actually land in the Merida airport. Landing in Merida is actually quite an experience. The city is on a valley between very high mountains (the Pico Bolivar is over 5,000m), and the airport is right in the middle of the city. Until a few years ago large jets were authorized to land, but only especially trained pilots were able to do the frightening maneuver of diving through the peaks and stopping on the short runway (the runway is really short, to the point that shops in the nearby streets had to close their shades at the time of the daily jet flight). Now only small planes are authorized to land, and the situation has somewhat improved, even though the landing stage can still provide quite an adrenaline rush, and the probability of getting in town together with your luggage are slim.
Despite the clouds and being again seated on the same side of the sun, we were treated by a wonderful view and I was able to do a few nice shots, like the one above. We will spend the night in caracas, and tomorrow morning another early wake up to get back to the airport for our return flight to US. We even got our luggage with us, which is quite a feat given that we would have had otherwise to arrive in Boston with our summer clothes on.
Go to the next installment of my Venezuela travel diary.
