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.

Directly behind our hotel in Puerto La Cruz, there was a road that led to Cerro el Morro…

which is a cliff that provides a gorgeous view of the sea and the city. Along the way, we saw this…

and this…

and finally at the top, this…

This cross is at the peak of the mountaintop…

It sort of reminds me of an evangelical church ground, but I digress. The only word I could think of to describe this place was tranquility…

What do you think?