Hola de Venezuela (hello from Venezuela)

Greetings from Merida, a small university city at 1,500m in the Venezuelan Andes.

We can hardly believe how much we've travelled since landing in the early hours of Wednesday, the 2nd of August. Barely six hours after arriving into the country we were back at the airport looking for a flight to take us offshore. For US$100 each, we found flights to take us to Los Roques Archipelago, a group of about 50 islands and cays half an hour's flying time north of the capital Caracas.
Once we found ourselves on the largest of the islands, it became obvious very quickly that we didn't bring enough money with us. The credit cards and traveller's cheques we'd brought weren't accepted, which severly limited our options. The cheapest room we found was US$100 per night (we later heard of a couple paying US$80) and a scuba dive cost US$85 each. Our room had aircondtioning (and we needed it!), but not much else.
The island wasn't as special as we'd hoped for (lobster wasn't in season) and although everything on the main island was within walking distance, we ran out of things to see in one twenty minute walk. Having said that though, we did enjoy watching the pelicans dive bomb for fish.
Back on the mainland we booked a bus to take us from Caracas to the Veneuelan backpacker haven of Merida. The bus drove 14 hours through the night and was freakin' freezing! We measured the temperature in the bus at a low of 16.4C - outside was over 30C at midnight! We were glad we had our fleece tops to wear, but they weren't enough.
Ah, Merida! We arrived, found a place to stay (US$12 per night), and have spent the afternoon exploring. We have booked a trip up the teleferico (cable car ) for Sunday (the earliest booking available).
Merida seems nice. There's a festival atmosphere and a big party-like gathering outside in the square at the entrance to the teleferico. We're going to sign off to join it.

Location Merida, Venezuela