Paramo andino

Road to Piñango, Venezuela (Dec 22, 2004)

Our idea for today was to get our rented car and drive to the “Pueblos del Sur”, a chain of small villages along a road crossing the mountains south of Merida. These villages are little known, and still preserve their traditional colonial architecture. We later learned that in one of these villages the mother of one of Mayli’s aunts was born. The village at the time was reachable from Merida after a two day horse ride along a steep mountain path. Mayli’s aunt father only made the trip twice, when dating his future bride: after the second trip he decided to ask Mayli’s aunt mother to marry him and elope to Merida, and be done with this terrible horse ride. We too had to give up, because the conditions of the road were still too rough for our Fiat UNO. So we decided to drive up to the road of the Paramo.

The Paramo is a high altitude (12,000ft) grassland ecosystem unique to the Andes of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. The Paramo is very beautiful and rich of many species that cannot be found in any other places in the world (endemisms).

The road of the Paramo connects Merida with the plains of Central Venezuela and passes through valleys connected by two high mountain passes, one of which is called Pico del Aquila, and is over 4,000m (12,000ft) on the sea level. That was our destination. Once we reached Mucuchies (which is the village where Mayli’s grandfather was born), we however took a detour to a remote village nested in a secondary valley where Mayli had been many years ago. The problem was that Mayli didn’t remember the way, nor the name of the village. However the people living in these mountains are really nice, and we managed to ask our way around even with the few memories that Mayli had of the place.

The little village, Gavidia, is indeed set at the end of a long secondary valley, reachable with a paved road climbing through a spectacular gorge. Passed the gorge the valley opens again with the village spread in its middle As far as I can tell the village is populated mostly by farmers and shepherds of native origin. Along the way we had been stopped innumerable times by little kids asking for change, for the “año viejo”. This is a typical tradition of the Andes, in which the kids build a man made of straws (the "año viejo) that is set on fire on the new year’s eve. They place their año viejo on the side of the road and ask for money at the passing cars. As you can guess we ended up pretty soon all without any change left, well before reaching the Gavidia. These little kids were really cute, some of them with green eyes in an indian face.

Once reached the village (and after Mayli took the ritual photo of the local “mercal” - see previous entry for explanations) we drove back, following a red truck with three little kids playing peek-a-boo with Mayli as she was trying to photograph them.

After Gavidia we drove on the road to the astronomical observatory and then to the Pico del Aguila pass. There, we took another secondary road to Piñango, another semi-isolated village. We had been in Piñango a few years ago (see this post), and it was definitely too far for today, as sunset was already approaching. However just driving for a few kilometers along the road was enough to enter a highland filled with frailejones, a dry climate plant endemic of the Paramo. The photo above was taken there. The name frailejones (“big monks”) derives from the fact that the plant at a distance looks like a monk walking in his robe. The most amazing characteristics of the frailejones are their furry leaves, that remind me of rabbits ears.

After filling one full 512MB card of pictures of frailejones we drove back to Merida, where we arrived when it was already dark, after stopping again in Mucuchies for dinner.

Go to the next installment of my Venezuela travel diary.