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Sunday, November 24, 2002
Our Trip to the Andes and How It All Started
One night over dinner with Sean and Jo,
around the time we bought Force Five from them, they had told
us about a fantastic adventure they'd had going up into the
Andes of Venezuela. Something about sherpas, and a mule ride,
and a small village from a century you can't quite put your
finger on. It sounded like they had walked through the pages
of a National Geographic magazine. We were intrigued. Curt
and I agreed that if we made it as far as Venezuela, we wanted
to find out if we might be able to put together a similar
trip of our own. Once we were arrived in Venezuela, we found
out that many cruisers make a trip similar to the one Sean
and Jo had told us about, but it seems that almost without
exception, they've done it the safer way (I think of it as
the "cheater" way)… to fly in and out for a
couple of days, and be done with it.
The town in the Andes is called Los Nevados,
outside of the more modern and highly populated city of Merida.
With the help of our friends on another boat, Viva! (Pam and
Steve), the four of us put together a plan to explore Venezuela
on our way to Los Nevados, and rent a car to drive through
the mainland to get there. It would take us at least a week,
all told, but we thought this would be a fun adventure- to
see the land of Venezuela, and the Andes, and to get to talk
to people about their country, their government, and their
way of life. We wanted more adventure then you would find
talking to the Venezuelan wealthy enough to buy an air ticket,
and more than what we could see peering out the window of
a plane at thirty thousand feet.
As we spoke with our Venezuelan friends
from Margarita to elicit their advice. we heard three rules
we should abide by to have a safe trip. 1) Do not drive after
dark. 2) Do not drive or stay in Caracas. And 3) There's a
nationwide strike against Chavez, on Monday. Stay out of all
the major cities that day- ESPecially Caracas. We had one
rudimentary map of the entire country, some notes we found
on the internet of a woman's bike trip along the same route,
and further notes from one of the tour guides back on Margarita…
we were off on our adventure.
The plan:
Take a ferry to Caracas. Rent a car to drive through the llanos
(plains), and then into the Andes' mountains and rainforests
to Merida. Once in Merida, we would take the Teleferico (gondola)
into the mountains, and rent burros and a guide to take us
to Los Nevados. Spend some time in Los Nevados, and hire a
four wheel drive Jeep and driver to take us back down to Merida
where we would backtrack to Caracas and finally… ferry
back to Margarita.
(more entries)
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