Maracaibo, Mountains and Merry Making

Townsfolk
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

I’m still having a great time here in Maracaibo hanging out with people here, doing some hiking and speaking Spanish, but my time here is drawing to an end and I’ve been getting ready to head into Columbia.

Over the weekend William and I headed north, near the border with Columbia for three days hiking in the mountains of Parque Nacional Pedija, visiting two indigenous towns up there. We headed off on Saturday afternoon, travelling a few hours by car, bus and on the roof of a jeep to the park. We were planning to hike for a 7 hours that night to the first town, but we decided to camp for the night when we could hear a river we had to cross, which is normally only a foot deep, 20 minutes up the mountain.

It turned out we made the right decision and when we arrived at the river the next morning it was still running strong. William got in to see how strong it really was, but it was above his waist and, even with a rope tying him to the shore, to strong to chance. We waited awhile for a local to help us across, but eventually decided to head back to Maracaibo. Defeated by the river, we drowned our sorrows (we weren’t really that sad) with some very drunk locals who were great fun to chat with, even though one of them kept bugging me about being American and asking why I wasn’t a Chavista (pro-Chaves). Somewhere between the 8th beer and explaining that I did like Chaves they were calling me by my Chinese name and inviting us back to stay with them. We gave them some food and old clothes and they gave us some necklaces, handmade hats and avocados, which in addition to coffee is their major crop, and we headed home, spending a couple of hours sleeping on the floor of a crammed bus.

I’ve pretty much only been speaking Spanish since I got here, and I think I’ve improved a lot, though there is still a long way to go. In fact, after a few beers I’ve been forgetting how to speak English, which wouldn’t be so bad if I could speak Spanish, but everyone here is being very patient with me :)

I’m thinking about coming back to Maracaibo after I go to Central America, but I’ll have to see how things go. I definitely feel time slipping away and will have to drop some things off the list to do. Unfortunately waking up on Monday morning for the 4:30AM bus to Santa Marta isn’t one of them.