Merida

Well, it is vacation time. I am in Merida, way up in the mountains. The big attraction here is the worlds longest and highest cable car. It goes from the city to the top of a nearby mountain that is 15000 feet high or more. But it is down for repair. I am still, though, in the mountain biking capital of South America, apparently.

So far things have gone very well. Amazingly so. I am staying in a posada that is amazing. My room is about as small as it could be and still hold a bed, but there are big communal areas, and the staff have been extremely helpful. There is really nothing like this kind of hospitality that I have experienced in the US....and for 12 dollars a night. And I have already figured that that works out to 360 dollars per month, which is about what a single apartment would cost.... And I really thought this place was too good to be true when I came into this internet cafe and it had a US style keyboard. Sadly though, my hopes were shattered when I found while they keys are laid out like the ones at home, they are all mapped to a standard Spanish style keys, so I have to remember that a quotation mark is shift-2 etc.

The interesting thing is this: Will I leave here thinking "I want to come back to Venezuela as a tourist for a month" or "I want to come back to San Carlos for two or three months." The cost for the two would be similar. I am reading The Demon and Miss Prym by P. Cuehlo which is an interesting rendition of the "personal struggle between good and evil" plot. I view the above question as my version of it, and try to answer it for myself as honestly as I can. We will see.

With the cable car down, and the nice lady at the hotel saying the zoo is not worth the cab fare to get there, I will have more time on my hands than I had expected, but it will allow me to do some biking and hiking before returning to Carorita on Sunday and the US on Thursday.