Trujillo

I woke up on Tuesday morning not really knowing what I was going to do that day.  I read a little bit and then decided that I wanted to go and try to find some ancient artifacts.  My friend Lucas served his mission here in Venezuela so he knows a lot of people here… including some treasure hunters.  He gave me the names of some people and told me the towns they lived in and so I set out to look for those places in the late afternoon.  Well it wasn´t a good idea for me to leave Merida so late because my next stop was Valera which is about 4.5 hours away by car 6 hours by bus…. I took a car.  But it is a long long road down the mountain and it was really foggy… and rainy… and I´ve already mentioned how dangerous the roads are here because the Venezuelans are the craziest drivers in the world.  I made it to Valera late at night and even made friends with the driver and the other two passengers.  Problem is I had to get to a town near Trujillo called la Muralla or la muralita… or something… haha don´t remember….Venezuela…. And when I got there I was going to have to knock on a stranger’s door and ask if I could spend the night…. Haha… bit scary.  Well… I split a cab with one of the other passengers… he was going to Trujillo…. He said he needed to make a phone call first… so I offered him my phone.  And I as soo sooo sooooo lucky I did!  So we drive to the place where I get out and I had no Idea but my Iphone dropped out of my pocket in the car.  So the taxi takes off and I knock on the door.  A girl comes to the door and I say is this the Parra Family?  She says yes I ask if her parents are home etc… anyway… all of the sudden I realize that my Iphone is gone and that makes me really sad….. but I remember to call the last number on my Venezuelan phone… call the person the guy who borrowed my phone called… he was just arriving there… so I talk to him and ask him to hold on to my phone and to give me his address.  Without even knowing me the Parra family drops everything and takes me to go get my phone.  When I actually got my phone back they couldn´t believe it.  They told me that once you lose something in that town… it is gone.

Me, Rafael (accountant) and Parra Fam.

So after the emergency I introduce myself and tell them I know one of their friends Lucas.  Well they have a long running joke that one of their rooms in their house is ¨Lucas´s Room¨ So He told me to go to their house and tell them I heard that my friend had a room here I could sleep in.  They laughed and let me stay.  Hermana Parra made me some food and they put a bed in the bedroom moved some things around to make me feel welcome and then we talked… I called Lucas and they talked… It was just a good thing.

Me and the Virgen de Paz!

The next morning Hermano Parra drove me up to Trujillo and dropped me off at a place where there were a lot of Toyota Land cruisers taking people up the mountain to see the GIANT ¨Virgin de la Paz¨ Ok… I had no idea that this thing was even in Trujillo but they have a giant statue of the Virgin that is taller than the Statue of Liberty!  So I ride up there climb the stairs… there are a couple different viewing platforms… but if you go all the way up to the top you can look out of the eyes of the virgin down onto the city of Trujillo.  I made a new friend at the statue named Hellen… she was there with her cousins.  We went and looked inside the church near the virgin and then they offered to give me a ride back into town…. I accepted.  The cousins are from a place called Isnotu which was like an hour away… and Hellen was from Barquisimetro… which I don´t know how far away that is… 2 or 3 hours maybe?  Anyways… they dropped me off in the Plaza Bolivar and then they drove home.

Me and Hellen

So there is something really cool about Venezuelan towns… it is that they all have a Plaza Bolivar.  It doesn´t matter how big or how small the town is… it always has a Plaza Bolivar.  The Plaza marks the center of the town and it expands from there.  Larger cities have huuuuge statues of Simon Bolivar and smaller towns usually just have a small bust of him.  Anyway… they are usually a local hangout and usually very beautiful places.  There is a really funny … kinda sad story about the Plaza Bolivar in Trujillo.

In South America you will find two cities named Trujillo.  Trujillo, Perú and Trujillo, Venezuela.  Well the story is that a very famous artist in Europe was commissioned to create a statue of Simon Bolivar for the Plaza in Trujillo Peru.  It is a large statue of Bolivar on a horse.  When the statue was finished it was shipped to Trujillo.  The problem was that it ended up in Trujillo Venezuela!  They gladly accepted the pre-paid statue and to this day refuse to give the statue to Peru.  And it is also said that afterwards… Trujillo Peru could only afford a small bust of Bolivar…. I´ll have to check it out when I´m there.  J 

Looking out of the virgin´s eye at Trujillo

Stain glass at the church by the virgin

Carved of stone!

I walked around for a bit but I was starting to feel a little sick… and then I got really really sick… in the stomach region.  So I was supposed to go meet some other people that owned a juice shop and ask them directions to another place but I just felt like I was going to die.  I went home and went to bed…. I woke up 6 or 7 times that night… for obvious reasons…. And then I decided I wasn´t going to eat anymore.  So the last time I had eaten was Wednesday morning.  Thursday I headed up to a new city called Bocono and wandered around there looking for a guy named Rafael Romero….  I knew that if I could find him that he would take me treasure hunting.  As I was looking around town asking for him I met a guy who spoke English named Pedro.  Pedro helped me look for him for awhile but to no avail.  Well Lucas gave me Rafael´s phone number but I couldn´t get hold of him that way either….  So Pedro invited me to his farm.  I was about to go see it when Rafael called… so I told Pedro I would check it out the next day.  I met up with Rafael and we went talking to some of the people he knew who had some artifacts.  They were really cool to see.  That night Rafael let me stay at his house.   The next day we went to a place called Niquitao to las pailas… beautiful place with waterfalls… looked around for some ancient findings…. Anyway… I don´t know if I can write whether or not I found anything on my blog….  Haha… anyway…. Then we went and met this lady who had a museum of kinda collectible stuff and a locked room with tons of these artifacts.  Well she agreed to let me see them and feel them even… very very cool…

@ Pedros Farm

So later that day I checked out Pedro´s farm… he has just moved to the outskirts of Bocono from Caracas…. So his farm is fairly new.  He is living in a cinderblock shed… but plans on building a home there… pretty cool… its like Harvest Moon… but real life…. And no elves.

That night I hung out with Rafael a little more….  I forgot to write that we went to a famous bridge in Niquitao... 2^nd highest in South America they say….. Speaking of Niquitao it reminds me of something weird that caught me off guard… the other day I went parasailing and when I asked the guide where we were flying from he said... from that mountain over there that looks like a ¨teta¨ well I´m sure you can already tell what that means… but for those of you that can… he said… we are jumping from that mountain that looks like a tit.  So that was surprising… but I thought my guide might just be a little course…. But the main mountain in Niquitao is officially named… la teta de Niquitao.  Bit strange eh??

Me and Rafael Romero on the 2nd highest bridge in south america

So I stayed the night at Rafael’s again… he gave me a fanny pack to carry my extra belongings in…. so that was great!  The next morning I go and pick up my backpack from the house of the Parra Family… and tell them goodbye and head back to Valera and back to Merida.  I wasn´t going to ever go back to Merida… but I was having trouble getting a hold of my friend Urs and we agreed to meet in Merida on Sunday… so I decided to go back.  It was the worst drive ever…. I sat up front at first but I started falling asleep and I was in the middle and so the driver said it was too dangerous for me to be there because he couldn’t drive… haha… so I had to move to the middle in the back…. The seat was super hot from the transmission and really really hard.  After 4.5 hours in that car I was glad to get out.  Plus I was scared to death cause the weather was even worse… the driver couldn´t see he kept having to wipe the foggy windows with his hand… curvy mountain road… foggy.. Rockslides and trees sometimes turned it suddenly into a one lane road… anyway… it was terrible…. The driver could barely see where he was going…. He definitely needs to fix his defroster.

¨Rocks¨

So I get to Merida and I strap the fanny pack to my backpack because it was making my pants fall down… well little did I know that the fanny pack opened and dropped out my wallet and all of the ancient artifacts I had!!!!  After awhile a guy catches up to me and asks... is this yours... he had my wallet!  I couldn´t hear him for the longest time…. I was listening to Juanes on my IPod…. That’s when I noticed the artifacts missing… I panicked!  I was like... is this all you found??? He said yes… why? Did you lose something else…? I said yes… he told me that the only other thing he saw was a bag of rocks….. A bag of rocks!!!! How relieving!  I backtracked and there next to trash… looking like trash in the streets were my artifacts… hahaha!  Good things they just looked like rocks to him!