Goodbye Andes (2-7/Aug/06)

Juangriego, Venezuela

Wonderful day travelling with a huge hangover. Not. Flew over Colombia with all their horrible guerrillas, kidnappings and cocaine-fuelled corrupt police (it's actually not that bad if you avoid the borders, but we now don't have time to visit it if we are to keep on schedule) to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. From there another flight straight to Merida, Venezuela's trek capital, at the end of the Andes.

Spent the next day recovering and "touching base", trying to sort out what we were going to do. Merida has the longest and highest cable car in the world. It is also the cable car with the longest waiting list in the world, as well as being the most expensive in the world. Ditched it. Seen plenty of mountains anyways, and realised we prefer to see them on foot. Suffering makes things prettier.

Next day we went to a small pretty "typical Andes village" called Jaji, which is very pretty but I wouldn't call it "typical" unless villages in the Venezuelan Andes are all mostly made up of souvenir shops. We also visited a nearby beautiful coffee hacienda, learned all about how the beans are processed from a very nice chap, and had a luvley cuppa.

Next dawn saw us with our backpacks getting the bus to the national park and trudging up the mountain. According to signposts, guidebook and national park staff from 2 separate offices the first day was only 3 hours. So we went slowly, farting about with the camera taking loads of pictures, until we met a few people who had actually done the walk (on their way back down) who said no way Jose, this is at least five hours. In the end we got to the campsite a bit late and depressed; all our times were wrong and we wouldn't be able to get as far as we wanted. No matter, we re-planned and did a slightly shorter route the next day (actually turned back early as it was windy and rainy). On the third day we walked back down, bollocked the staff at the national park office, and returned back to Merida to catch the night bus.