Mountains, music and lots of rain

Venezuela is under cloud – everywhere but particularly in the Andes, causing floods and bridges to be swept away.  We just don’t get anything like it in England, streets turn to streams within minutes.  

Our walk in the mountains was lovely. We decided not to go on a guided tour up into the Andes from Mérida as the weather was so bad we probably wouldn’t have seen a lot anyway.  Instead, we caught a local por puesto mini-bus into the Lower Andes.  A great ride through villages and passing lots of restaurants specialising in trout. One offered a ‘catch it and cook it’ option which sounded quite exciting. Although, I suppose it could have become a bit distressing had the trout not been caught come dinner time. Anyhow, we gave that a miss and headed off alone with our cheese cobs up a winding track, over stone walls and stepping stones (reminiscent of the Peak District) into the mountains.  The path was easy to follow and the scenery was beautiful as we climbed, often steeply, past lovely plants and birds. It was great to have a day out walking in the countryside without a guide and group. 

We waited over an hour for a por puesto to turn up to pick us up and, as dark and rain descended, we finally heard it juddering up the hill – a blue, clapped out mini-bus (think the A-team van after a bad accident) which against the odds was determined to stick on the roads.  When the driver put it in reverse, rather than the standard beeping, the van blared out the Macarena – much more fun. The whole thing absolutely stank of petrol, we got about a mile and it stopped. Oh dear again. The driver got out, filled a bottle of water from a stream and tipped it into the radiator, went for a wee at the side of the van and we set off again – windows open so that we could breathe. As we got further down the mountains, we picked up more passengers – 23 of us squashed in at all angles by the time we reached Mérida.

The next day, we decided to go with a recommended tourist attraction in our trusty guide book – Parque Beethoven – established to commemorate 200 years since the death of Beethoven, the park apparently had a clock that chimed out a different Beethoven symphony on the hour every hour.  After a half hour walk out of town along a main road and into a fancy housing estate we tracked down the Parque – a dilapidated square with a rusty, broken clock.  The heavens opened at this point and we spent half an hour sheltering under a tree with fading hope of any musical joy. It took Simon stretching through the bars and clanging a bell to hear any noise from the Beethoven clock. Oh well. It opened in 1972, I wonder when it broke.

On a broken theme, unfortunately so was the teleférico – the cable car that ascends from Mérida up the mountains to nearly 5000 metres.  The teleférico workers were all there, in position, in their uniforms with no idea whatsoever why it had been ordered to close 4 months ago – could be the cables, the wire etc. or when it may re-open. They told us they thought a technician may come to have a look at it again in 2009. Ce la vie.

We had a great hour or so in a grand university hall listening to the Merida symphonic orchestra.  Mum told me the other day about a documentary in the UK on the Venezuelan youth orchestra (of which this orchestra forms a part) – a thriving grass-roots movement to get kids, often from the poorer parts of town, inspired and into playing instruments.  It’s been a huge success and I came away from it quite up for getting out the clarinet when we get home!