The Taste of Eternal Love
23 August 2005 (Thursday) – Mérida, Venezuela
I did not sleep a wink last night. Not because I was freezing cold. No, I was in my fleece jacket as I was rather prepared. But the elderly couple behind me could not stop talking. Many people were shushing them up, but they were clearly unaware and carried on yakking. Finally, the bald guy sitting next to me gave them a long tirade and the couple finally shut up. But later, the elderly couple fell asleep and oh my god, it was even worse! The man snored horrendously loud!!!!!! Argh…
In the morning, I got to chatting with the bald guy, Eduardo. He is a Spanish, married to a Venezuelan lady and now lives in Mérida. To my surprise, he was very kind and helpful and offered to take me to the city centre in his car, as his wife had come to pick him up at the bus terminal. He told me it was possible to find posadas for around 10,000 to 15,000 bolivares. Yep, that would be my budget range, for I intend to stay here for about 4 or 5 days, and anything more would really cost too much!
But, Mérida, like Morrocoy, was full of Venezuelan tourists as well. This time, Venezuelan tourists who prefer the mountains. I poked around a few posadas and my lucky star was shining on me, found one single room for 12,000 bolivares. Excellent!
My original intention was to sleep! But it seemed such a waste of a nice day like today, so instead, I walked around town, popping into various tour agencies and asking for information about tours around Mérida.
Mérida is set in a valley at the northern end of the Andes mountains. If the day is clear, you can have a view of all the magnificent peaks around from the town itself. The peaks include Pico Bolivar, which is the highest at 5007m. Of course, they have to name the highest peak after their beloved liberator – Simon Bolivar. The other famous peak Pico Espejo, at 4765m is where the world’s highest and longest cable-car system ends at. Imagine, taking a cable-car all the way into the clouds! It will be an amazing experience. Then, there is Pico El Toro at 4755m and Pico El Leon at 4740m. All very gorgeous rugged mountains around. Mérida is also the site where many adventure tours like parapenting, canyoning, mountain-biking, hiking, etc… can be organised.
Some of the tours to Los Llanos and Catatumbo were very expensive. I can’t afford them, so forget about them. I then settled for an excursion to the Paramos (highlands) for tomorrow and maybe, the day after, I would go to Los Nevados by myself.
Mérida has a famous ice-cream parlour called Heladeria Coromoto which is in the Guiness Book of Records. It has up to 750, or some say, 1000 ice-cream flavours… whatever! OK, there were many many ice-cream flavour signs on the board, but the ice-cream flavours available for choosing were fewer, but still, mind-boggling. Imagine, ice-cream flavours for hamburger, rice with chicken, garlic, spaghetti, etc… and others with names like Italy, Norway, Europe, Africa, Miss Venezuela, My Beautiful Mérida, For You My Love, Sun and Shadow, Viagra The Hope, etc…
I ordered ‘Cream of Crab’ and ‘Eternal Love’. The ‘Crab’ was so-so, but ‘Eternal Love’ tasted very nice. Ah, now I can say I know the taste of eternal love, hahaa…
Tags: 05) Merchants of Little Venice, Merida
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