Merida
Merida an unknown destination in the Andes
MERIDA (AP) - I left the city on an early morning flight, taking off into a rosy dawn, and an hour later we were coming down into the Andes.
Mérida lay perched at 5,000ft on a semi-tropical meseta, flanked by two rivers. The airport was in the very centre of town, a postage stamp of runway surrounded by roads and houses. Outside, the air was cool and mountain-sweet, a world away from the sweltering temperatures of the coast.
Two mountain ranges, the Sierra Nevada and the Sierra La Culata, run like shoulder blades through this northern reach of the Andean cordillera. While their peaks are cloaked in snow, their lower slopes are carpeted with rainforest and dotted with fields of coffee, wheat and potatoes. From Mérida, the world's highest and longest cable car runs up to Pico Espejo, just under 15,650ft. This being Venezuela, however, only three of the four sections are working.
Picking up my hire car proved a complicated business. A young woman made a phone call to the capital to confirm my booking. Was there a problem? No, there was no problem - but I must wait. Meanwhile, she checked the car for dents and scratches, ticking them off painstakingly on a clipboard. Then she made another phone call. Still I must wait. But there was no problem, she assured me.
Finally, she took off the car's hub-caps and popped them into the boot for safekeeping - before making yet another phone call. It was about this time that I realised that she had no authority whatsoever, but her American training and Latin politeness obliged her to keep up appearances. Good manners in the face of bureaucratic impotence: a common sight in Latin America.
Mérida is a modern university town, with a few colonial-style buildings and a cathedral begun in 1800. On dusty streets, fast-food outlets jostled with cafes whose ancient Gaggia machines dispensed cups of high-octane coffee known as pequeñas. Beaten-up Por Puesto minibuses pumped out clouds of exhaust fumes; music thumped from doorways. There were election banners hanging from windows, and cars with loudspeakers playing tinny campaign songs.
In the countryside it was another story. My base lay 15 miles out of town at La Mesa de los Indios, an Amerindian village of dusty streets and sun-bleached houses, silent in the afternoon heat, untroubled by campaign banners or rhetoric. At the centre was a leafy plaza with a white-painted church and the inevitable statue of Bolivar; several elderly American cars were parked in the shade.
Outside the Posada Papa Miguel, an old Indian man with a blank expression sat squinting in the doorway. The posada's proprietor, Arminda, was an Indian woman with tight dark curls, a lovely smile and three daughters, Rocio, Rocire and Rocimar, who stood arranged in descending order like a welcoming committee of angels. They showed me to my room, overlooking a courtyard hung with flowers.
Arminda cooked a meal of Pisca Andina soup flavoured with coriander, and poured glasses of Anis del Mono, a clear licorice drink that spreads out from the stomach in a warm glow. We gossiped about village life and politics.
Arminda would be voting in the presidential election, but doubted that many villagers would join her. Only two things traditionally mattered to the Andean peasant, Arminda insisted: religion and alcohol. La Politica, like the capital itself, belonged to another world.
Next morning I headed for the Sierra Nevada National Park, passing neat little Indian villages with donkeys in the fields and the tangy smell of woodsmoke rising up in acrid gusts. Pick-ups rumbled along, the men in the back waving lazily as I overtook. At about 8,000ft the vegetation began to thin out and the landscape lost its cultivated look, and became increasingly barren.
This was the p?ramo, the highland moor that separates the rainforest from the high Andean peaks. It was an undulating expanse of green and brown hills, dotted with wild flowers. Lupins, chicory and the red "Spanish flag" brought little splashes of colour to the denuded landscape.
By the time I reached the national park gate at 11,000ft, I was feeling the altitude. The thin air and harsh sunlight of the Andes wear you down quickly. I set off on the walk down to the Laguna Negra - the Black Lake - breathing deeply and taking small steps. It took an hour to reach the lake, a punchbowl of black against the cloudswept hills. I stared around in awe.
The journey from Caracas had taken me from modern city to traditional village, to a place on the roof of the world where the presence of humans is largely irrelevant. Pasar el P?ramo, literally "to cross the P?ramo", is also a local expression for dying.
Back in Mérida it was Friday night, and the town was buzzing. At a local restaurant I ate chicken with garlicky mashed potatoes, and fell in with a group of students who heard me talking English to the proprietor and invited me over. We set off on a tour of the bars, ending up in La Taverna, a lively place with graffiti-covered walls and three televisions showing three different channels.
The students were drinking Solar beer with rum chasers, and shouting to make themselves heard. Venezuelans are noisy, flamboyant talkers, given to extravagant gestures. And - another paradox - their national pride is tempered by self-irony. Stefano, a politics student in his 20s, told a typical joke: when God created Venezuela, He blessed her with beautiful mountains, gold and oil. When another Latin American country objected to these advantages as unfair, God demurred. "Huh," He said, "you should have seen the people I put there . . ."
It was Stefano who took me along to see the presidential candidate the next day. "Irene", as she is known to all, is not an unlikely politician for Venezuela. In a country that sets such store by image, beauty contests are a legitimate step on the career ladder. Caracas has many beauty academies for aspiring hopefuls. It is also a centre for cosmetic surgery - about which Stefano had another joke. When Venezuelan beauty queens die, he said, they give their bodies back to medical science.
Irene herself is in her prime. Her appeal is to youth and idealism, and the noise as her private jet touched down was deafening. As the candidate emerged into the sunlight several teenagers near me were in tears of joy. I caught sight of the girl from the hire-car office, waving and smiling. There was something very moving about the passion Venezuelans bring to public life. Even the superficialities of politics are underpinned by real emotion.
This rubs off on strangers. As the candidate pressed through the throng of people, buffeted this way and that, but still smiling, it suddenly became important to take part rather then just watch. With a heave I pushed my way past a security guard and leaned forward. Whoever wins tomorrow's election, Irene will know that she went into the contest with the good wishes of this visitor firmly behind her.
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