Mérida (August 18-20)

:: August 18 ::

We spent the next three days in Mérida mostly wandering around and relaxing in our hammocks. I finally made Lincoln get a haircut after four months, and he bought some new sandals too (cheapies to wear at the beach). The buses were sold out for Saturday so we bought tickets departing Sunday night for an overnight bus to Valencia. Ton & Amanada, the couple we had met on the truck on our way to rafting, returned to the hostel today from their Los Llanos tour so we hung out with them a lot for the rest of our time in Mérida. Today we played cards with them and the went to the same Italian restaurant we had eaten lunch at (Restaurant Federico) because Ton & Amanda were craving pasta.

:: August 19 ::

More relaxing in hammocks today. Around 4:00 Amanda bought some bottles of wine and we started playing cards. Lincoln went out around 7:00 to get more wine and beer because we had run out! A huge rainstorm started and was getting our balcony wet so we went to the communal balcony where we met Mel (from Vancouver) and Tom (UK) so they joined us for a few rounds of Asshole and beers. Other people at the hostel had raved about the burgers from the stand across the street so Lincoln and Ton went out around midnight to get us some chicken burgers and hamburgers. The rumours did not lie – these were among the best burgers we have ever had – and they even had crispy French fries on them. Yum!

:: August 20 ::

Yet another slow day, particularly after our late night. We went out for a late breakfast with Ton & Amanada at the same place we had eaten a week ago when we arrived (but the service and food was not nearly as good). After relaxing some more, we wandered down to the Heladeria Coromoto again to show it to A&T, and bought ice cream from a different place along the way (soft ice cream dipped in chocolate and peanuts). A&T have a video camera with them and they decided that they would make a video collage of both all the old cars in Venezuela and the “big butts” that are unattractively squeezed into super-tight jeans – they were hilariously getting footage. We are looking forward to seeing the finished product!

I was determined to try the local specialty of cachapas before we left, a freshly-ground corn pancake with melted cheese in the middle, so I bought one for lunch from a vendor beside the park. It was very good but it was so big I couldn’t eat it all. We went back to the Mexican restaurant again for dinner with Amanda & Ton and sadly said goodbye to them when we left to catch our 9:00pm bus. We had lots of fun with them and hope to visit them in Leiden, Holland while we are living in England, or maybe they will come and visit us in London.

Amazingly our bus only left ½ hour late tonight, and the bus was a reasonable temperature instead of 5 degrees Celsius. We still needed our sleeping bag, but at least our heads weren’t freezing. The seats weren’t very comfortable though, so we didn’t sleep well.