As you know, we spent the New Year in Mérida, Venezuela. It’s a mountainous town located in the Venezuelan Andes. We had heard a lot about its tourism and it’s supposed to be one of the better developed areas in the country. The Mérida airport is closed, so we flew into Vigía, which is about a 2 hour drive away.

The entire town is surrounded by mountains (sort of like Caracas) and apparently the snowy season is in June and July. This was the only mountain – Pico Bolívar – that had snow and I was told it keeps it year round.

There are numerous public spaces/parks – another similarity to Caracas and an abundance of greenery.

The town’s main attraction is the world’s longest and highest cable car system, which lucky for me is currently under repair. You can tell that a lot of the town’s tourism was based on this because there are about 50 hotels, like the one you see above, within a 1 minute walking distance of the entrance.

During the day, the weather was very nice and sometimes even hot. But, every night the sky was completely clouded and it became a freezing – well by my standards – 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Happy New Year!

I don’t know if it’s because Christmas and New Year’s landed on weekends, but for some reason I feel like 2012 snuck up on me. These pictures are the views I woke up to on January 1st after a quiet night in Merida. Our vacation is still in full effect, but I wanted to share this beautiful blue sky before I get sucked back into normal life.

By the way, I committed the ultimate photography mistake and forgot my camera charger, so these pictures are courtesy of my iPod.