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Sunday, October 12, 2003

Teleférico de Mérida

Believe it or not, Venezuela has the longest and highest teleférico in the world. The Teleférico de Mérida is a stunning feat of engineering (even if it did fall apart in 1991), and the closer you get to the top the more difficult it is to find suitable adjectives to describe the view!

We were going to take it yesterday, but the weather was pretty rotten, and it was a good thing we decided to wait. This morning was probably the clearest day yet, so we could see right up to Pico Bolívar.

The cable car trundles along 12.5 kilometres (not entirely true - you have to get off and on at various stations along the way), and by the time you're done you're at an altitude of 4,765 metres above sea level. That's only a fourteen metres short of Mont Blanc, the highest point in Western Europe. Pico Bolívar itself is about 200 metres higher, and we were lucky in that the views of it from the top were amazing.

At that altitude, lack of oxygen becomes a slight problem. You can feel your pulse quickening, and it becomes increasingly difficult to walk for any length of time without running out of breath. It's also pretty cold, although there was no snow at the top station (Pico Bolívar was about half covered in snow).

We caught the cable car back down just as the inevitable clouds descended on Mérida for the equally inevitable afternoon showers.

At Bs 25,000 ($16) it isn't cheap - that's a huge amount of money by Venezuelan standards. Nevertheless, worth every penny (or cent...). I'd been on the thing before, with RGS, although the top station had been closed when we were there, so there was something new even for me!

OK, we're having a day off tomorrow. But get this: the day after that we're going on a two-day wildlife tour of the Catatumbo river delta, north west of here. Then next Saturday we're going on a two-day rafting expedition in the foothills of the Andes. Needless to say, we can't wait!

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