Living in Venezuela is not an easy task, specially when seeing your life wither away under the ruthless grip of an authoritarian government is not your thing...
Nonetheless, amidst the chaos a small city in the middle of the Venezuelan Andes has managed to retain some of its former charm.
I'm talking about Mérida, a town with less than 500,000 inhabitants, locked in a montainous valley of the Sierra Nevada, the northernmost branch of the Andes mountains. Standing on a plateau at 1600 meters above sea level, this city is different from anything you'll find in the rest of our tropical country.
A magnificent weather with temperatures that usually stay under 25 °C and the tallest peaks in Venezuela flanking both sides of the skyline make me feel thousands of miles away from our depressing reality. It's only when you realise mountains can't save you from sky-high inflation, scarcity and social meltdown that you remember Mérida is -sadly- still a part of Venezuela.
The picture above is the city as seen from of the wagons of Mérida's famous skycraper. The highest in the world, reaching over 4,000 meters above sea level. Arguably one of the few nice things the current government left us. Built by Austrian and Swiss engineers, the skycraper is quite something, modern installations flanked bi huge crystal windows and filled with flatscreen tvs remind me more of an European airtport rather than third world touristic attraction.
After a little more than an hour, you'll be able to forget all your problems and behold landscapes like these.
Just like the highlands -or "páramos" as we call them- in the picture, similar landscapes surround most towns around the metropolitan area. I will talk about those in future posts.
Let me know what if you're interested in more posts like this.
See ya.