Thursday, July 29th

First of all, the students in last week's accident are fine, nothing was more serious than a dislocated shoulder.

With only a week & ½ left in  Mérida, I plan to spend the last couple weekends getting to the places in town that I haven't made time for yet. A few more souvenirs to pick up yet as well (most will come from the markets, too bad about fresh fruit, though). A few more pics in this slideshow than normal, a little bit of most of the things I've gotten into since coming to Venezuela. I definitely want to give Ysaac a big pat on the back! He took care of almost all of my travel arrangements while I was here, & got us into a lot of things that would not be a part of any normal tourist program. Possibly the best parts of the trip, thanks! 

The teachers and staff at Venusa have been great. I've had very few snags while here, but they've always been friendly & quick to help with whatever has come up. A huge thanks to Joan and Yiya - the cooks here at Venusa. Great food & variety, I'll be bringing a few ideas home with me! It was nice meeting my homestay family, too. More time together would have been nice, but schedules here are just as hectic as they are in the states & finding time is never easy.

Anyway, with all that, I really miss my wife & kids and am very much looking forward to seeing them (a week from Tuesday!). I don't know if I'll be posting next week or not, it'll be busy. A couple papers to write, a presentation to prepare, a couple more tests and I'll be done with my study-abroad term in Venezuela. I realized last night that this is the first time in twenty years that I've been out of Minnesota for more than a couple months at a time. It's been great, but I'm ready to go home.

Take it easy! 

Monday, July 26th

First, I'd ask anybody reading this to keep the other traveling group of students in their prayers. The bus they were in while returning from the beach last weekend missed a curve & rolled a few times. From what I've heard, it sounds like there was nothing more than minor injuries - bumps, bruises, maybe a few fractures, but nothing requiring hospitalization. Thanks. 

OK, enough of the serious stuff. Saturday morning we left Mérida heading (more or less) North toward Lake Maracaibo. We made a few stops on the way: lagoons, sugar cane farm/refinery (briefly there), a few markets & restaurants, as well as driving through miles and miles of fields. The fields here are a bit different than in the states. I did see some corn, though very little, no soybeans at all. Mostly bananas, but quite a few palm oil trees too. Later that day, we stopped at a river that feeds into the lake (I don't remember which river - there are a lot of them & names are something I've never been too good with). This was a fairly small town, the pier seemed to be the busiest place from what I could tell (even saw an offshore oil drill that had put in for some reason). From there, it was down the river by boat - very interesting trip & beautiful scenery. We saw a few families of red howler monkeys, but I really didn't notice much howling...

It wasn't a tight river, but I don't have any idea how that drill made it through. Anyway, after awhile - really not sure how long, we made it to the mouth of the lake. From there it wasn't far to the house we would be staying in. It was on the lake, but not like the houses in Minnesota are on the lake - this was on the lake, stilts instead of a basement. If you would have rolled out of bed, instead of a thump there would have been a splash. Actually, no, there weren't beds - we slept in hammocks, details...

Uh-oh, it's 3:45 already. Sorry, but I'm going to have to be a little more concise. Safari, trip around (part of) the lake, night safari, Italian roommates - & Hungarian (Euro version of Peace Corps), woke (too) early, back up the river, more driving - more bananas, spelunking, chewing coffee beans, didn't do the trick, had to stop for real coffee, through a cloud forest, insanely dense clouds, couldn't see the painted lines on the roads (where the roads were paved), washed out road was open again, saved a long detour, more mountains, even less visibility, and eventually back into Mérida. Very interesting, time well spent. Lots of homework & finals next week, so I should do something a little more productive. Later!

Friday, July 23rd

Last trip up to Mucubaji was today. This was the fourth in all, so I've posted about it a few times before, I don't know if I can add much of anything without being redundant. Still, I had to put up a final batch of pics. It would have been nice to have spent some real time in this area, maybe a weekend camping trip or something, instead of just a couple hours at a time. I don't think many people from here would have been interested, though. It gets pretty cool at night, a light frost even this time of year isn't uncommon at all. Personally, I find cooler weather - especially when camping, to be best for sleeping, but I might be in the minority with this opinion.

Tomorrow we're off to Zulia - the state where the Catatumbo meets lake Maracaibo. Quite a bit is planned for the weekend & I think it will be very interesting, but instead of talking about what might happen now, I'll just post again on Monday about what did happen.

Have a great weekend, take it easy! 

Tuesday, July 20th

Nothing new to post really, just looking over some of the pics from the past month or two & after considering the landscape, I wondered: ¿Why I haven't seen any dinosaurs yet?

(click on any to see full-sized) 

I've seen the movies, well, not all the movies, but enough to know that places that look like this are where the dinosaurs are.

Oddly enough, very little has been heard from the students who 'allegedly' returned to the US a couple weeks ago. Might be that something funny is going on...

I'm not saying that there has been anything unusual that was covered up or hidden from the press or anything like that (you'd need some pretty solid evidence to make a claim like that...). I'm just saying something seems funny & what little I do know (very little - nothing new there) all seems to point to the same thing...

(Seriously - If I'm not back by the middle of August, send a search party!)

Viernes, 16 de Julio

Well, it's been a week since I've posted. I probably should have posted sooner, there must be something interesting that I could have said, but no matter what might have or could have been, I didn't & that's all there is to it I guess. This is the end of the third week of 'B' session, which meant midterms. They weren't called midterms, but the tests we had were cumulative & did cover ½ a semester of information, and since this is, in fact, the middle of the accelerated term, 'midterm' seems to fit.

We had a field trip today (test was yesterday) in botany. Very interesting, but I just can't remember the name of the place. It was meant to be an example of a dry environment. To be fair, there were plenty of cacti & it was technically in a rain shadow, but honestly, dry for Venezuela is not terribly dry (you can see in the pics above that it was raining while we were there). Maybe Dakota dry, but certainly not Arizona dry. Details. It was considerably drier than the surrounding areas.

Hmm, so far the tone of this post feels a little cynical, not my intent, I'll try to fix that. Full week next week, classes M-Th as usual. Friday will be another trip to Mucubaji (very good news), and Saturday & Sunday will be spent at Catatumbo. That means I might have a short post next Friday the 23rd, but probably little if anything sooner than that. Hopefully it also means I'll have quite a bit to post on Monday the 26th.

Friday, July 9th

A field trip into a cloud forest this morning, Monte Zerpa, actually. Very interesting, I have been looking forward to this one for quite awhile. I know, your looking at the pictures & saying 'If that's a cloud forest, where are the clouds?'. It isn't always cloudy in a cloud forest, just usually - besides, if it were cloudy the pictures would have only shown a few feet into el bosque before everything was covered by the clouds. We didn't see many animals - the vegetation really is very thick in there, but we heard quite a few: monkeys (I don't know what kind); toucans; & some kind of a mountain-jungle turkey (no, really!). I'm getting hungry & don't feel like sitting at this keyboard any longer, so that's it for now. I know I didn't write much, but the pictures are more interesting anyway. Oh, that shot of me swinging in a vine - it isn't photoshopped, just weird. Hasta la tarde...

Tuesday, July 6th

Yeah, I know it's been awhile since I've posted, but I do actually have work to do sometimes. Session 'B' started last week which means all new classes & turnover of about ½ of the exchange students, maybe a little more. Didn't do anything for the 4th of July - it's just another day here. However, July 5th is the Venezuelan Independence day - how's that for weird? They don't get into it as much as we do in the states, it's kind of like Labor Day - many (most?) people have the day off & everybody seems to be happy about it, but nobody seems to quite know, or for that matter even care, why...

I've got some writing to do & should get going, but will put in one quick clip first (OK - I am talking in this one):