Merida!

Ok... So I am back in Merida... and I was looking over my blog and I realized that I never wrote about it.  I think it is because I thought I would write about it after all the activities... well the only thing I haven´t done here yet that I want to is bungee jumping... but you can do that anywhere... so I guess I´ll leave that out for now.

This is Grahm from England and a couple from holland.  So the guy was super cool... but his wife got sick and drunk one night and got suuuuper duper mad at me for talking about amsterdam, weed, hookers, tulips, windmills and wooden shoes... I told her that is what came to mind when I thought of Haha... she called me a stupid F-ing American..... when she went to bed.... we all sat around trying to think of anything else that had to do with Holland ;p

Ok... So I already told you some about my first trip here... I went to the zoo and became friends with Urs and Felicita..... but now Felicita has flown home and Urs is on his way back up here from Caracas... then we are going to head out to Maracaibo and then over to Colombia.  (Update from when I last wrote this... Me Urs and Joe were gonna all go to colombia together... but they have decided to go early and I´m headed up to Maracaibo for a big festival first and then over to Colombia)
While here I went paragliding... oh man... that was an experience... my guide picked me up and he had a little beer on the breath and he drove me to the south part of merida where we were to go gliding.  Like I said in an earlier post he really caught me off guard when to said we were jumping off the mountain that looked like a ¨teta¨ anyway.... parasailing takes a lot of patience.... back and forth and back and forth gaining altitude to go to the places you want to go... the only scary part for me was going over power lines....

 Video of me paragliding
I also went to la culata with a local I met here who said he would be my guide for the day... I didn´t pay him or anything... i just paid his bus fare to where we were going... so that worked out pretty nice.
Coming back to Merida for the 2nd time was a joke.  Like I told you in my last post... but I am glad I did... cause it was nice to see friends that were still at the hostel and meet new friends as well.  Joe from England decided to cancel his excursion to los llanos to go with me and Urs to Maracaibo and then over to Colombia.  Me and Joe have been hanging out the past couple days waiting for urs and have been having a great time despite the rain every day.

Yesterday we went to the hot springs with a girl named Anna from Germany.... she has been staying at the hostel for like 3 weeks and is leaving soon.  Well she is the one who got the directions so we just kind of followed her.  Well... the way she explained it was that she heard there were 2 different places for hot springs... the higher ones and the lower ones... but that the higher ones were best.  So we asked the jeep driver to take us to the higher ones.... he did.... but we thought they were the lower ones because this lady in the jeep asked if we were gonna go up higher..... we thought that was the way to the higher better ones so we went.  She charged us 10 bolivar each and showed us this tiny trail to follow... well we did..  forever!!! and finally found where the hot water first comes out of the mountains... which was cool but definetly not what we were looking for.  I was kinda mad that the lady tricked us... we turned around and I went and got my money back from her... I asked her why she charged me for nothing.... ¨Oh... there was nothing there?  oh thats right! the volcano/earthquake destroyed it¨  yeah right.......  anyway.. luckily we got our money back... and walked to the higher pools.... well they werent cool... because they were just swimming pools and the water wasnt even warm... don´t get me wrong... it would have been a cool place to BBQ with a bunch of friends but we continued down the hill to the lower pools.... finally after walking down a long dirt road we made it there.... exactly what we were looking for!  There was one really hot pool a sauna and 2 cooler pools surrounded by like waterfalls.... really really cool.... the locals had littlered below with tons of garbage though... so that was a dissapointment especially since we had to pay $20 bolivar $2.50 US  to get in....  but no big deal... it was a cool place.

Well... we will probably leave from Merida sometime tomorrow... I was reading in Joes guidebook and it looks like we are going to get to Maracaibo just in time for a festival!  And I think it´s like.... the virgins birthday.... man my timing is good.... haha