I have been seeing a lot of pro-Chávez propanga and the title is an example of a really common one: With Chávez, the people are the government. Most people I have talked to roll their eyes and sigh when they see this...
After returning from my Los Llanos excursion, I had a few days to explore Mérida. The people I stayed with are really great. Victor´s nephew Alfredo and his friend Luis were really fun and showed me around the town and some of the mountains outside of it.
Thursday we just spent the day in Mérida exploring the downtown area. Our first stop was the little Museo Arquidiocesano (religious art museum) attached to the cathedral. Strangely, most of the exhibits featured modern paperback religious books that weren´t at all artistic, bu the museum did have the world´s 2nd oldest bell made in 909 which was pretty sweet and a mummy. I´m not really sure why they had a mummy there because the person was of indigenous origin long before any western religion had influence on the continent, but it was still pretty cool. It still had hair and toenails! The lady that came to guide us around spoke perfect English without an accent and of course lived in Portland for a bit. Seriously, Portland is a popular place to go if you´re from Mérida. Next we tried to find the colonial art musuem, but ended up in a building with a few modern art pieces and a whole room dedicated to anti-American propaganda. One of the pictures was soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima, but instead of our flag it was a McDonald´s sign with arabic on it. I think I´ve seen that before. Alfredo felt really really bad and went and complained to someone who worked at the museum about the exhibit, but she didn´t really care what he said. Most of the pictures were so obviously changed in photoshop that I was really offended at all. It was just a bunch of made up stuff and looked really fake too. After that we went to the small, but interesting Museo Arqueológico and then on to the Parque de las Cinco Repúblicas to look at Mérida´s oldest monument to Bolívar. It is a little tiny bust of him on top of a HUGE pillar and looks pretty silly. It was strange because this park was also the most rundown of any we have gone to. It is supposed to be a monument to the five countries Bolívar freed, but looked pretty abandoned. The views from the park were spectacular though- up two green green valleys with the two rivers in them and little brightly colored suburb villages running up the hillsides. In the same area was Plaza Milla, one of the prettiest parks I have seen in Venezuela so far. It had a beautiful and meticulously manicured garden and big trees with long ribbons of moss hanging off them. In the center was a big fountain and a statue of Antonio Jose de Sucre, another national hero. At this point we were getting really hungry and boys knew of a good pizza place at the other end of town. We got on a bus, but for some reason the traffic was horrible and we were able to walk faster. Well, not too long after getting off the bus we discovered that protesters had lit roadblocks on fire and thus traffic was at a standstill in the center. There weren´t any protesters around anymore, just burning piles of stuff blocking the street. We walked and walked and the boys started smelling tear gas (when they were little they had to bring vinegar and tissues with them on the walk to school because the police were always using tear gas and vinegar helps make it less strong, so they know the smell of tear gas) so we walked faster. We got to the pizza restaurant after walking really really far without incident. After dinner we needed a few things from the store, so we went to the one by Alfredo and Victor´s apartment. Everytime a Venezuelan goes to the grocery store, they must give the cashier their national ID number so what they purchase is entered into a national database. I find this pretty terrifying considering the government´s current rhetoric on "redistribution of wealth." In other words, they know exactly who has money and what they are spending it on. Luis and I had a really good politic discussion as well and he and his family have to worry about things I never even imagined. Things are definitely staring to get scary for intellectuals and the middle class.
On Friday we headed up into the Parque Nacional Sierra de la Culata to the little mountain village of La Culata. Upon our arrival I checked my altimeter only to find we were at 10,500ft. Hello! We walked up an old road, part of which was a creek bed, through cows and fields and little houses up to a big rock on a hill. Apparently this is the main local attraction, and while it was pretty interesting (and a popular bouldering spot), we continued onward up the road to the top of the next ridge at the same height as the summit of Mt. Hood. It was abit foggy, but every so often the fog would lift and we would get a glimpse of the surrounding peaks. They are pretty dry, without trees, but still green with little plants. Sometimes you could see up into a high, bright green basin filled with giant white boulders and protected by a white band of cliffs with some waterfalls. Also, there was a bunch of red indian paintbrush! Cool! It was really nice and I was happy to hike a bit. On our way back to Mérida, we stopped at a little village famous for pasteles, little pastries filled with different meats or cheese. Of course of the ten flavors normally offered, only cheese was avaliable, but they were really tasty and cheap, although deep fried. Back in Mérida, the roads were blocked by protests again, but we made it back ok.
Yesterday Victor and some of his friends and I drove up to the mountain villages of Mucuchíesand San Rafael. San Rafael had a beautiful little stone church looking over the valley below the mountains. From there we drove up to the Collado del Condor, the top of the pass at 13000+ feet high and really really cold! The fog lifted towards sunset to expose the mountains and we enjoyed a very nice view of the surrounding peaks and the sunset. It was a good day, although there was a lot of driving involved.
Right now I am in the town of Trujillo for the night and will be leaving tomorrow night for Caracas via a night bus. Love you.
