Travel to Mérida (August 11 & 12, 2006)

We arrived at the bus station this morning at a little before 8:00am and immediately bought tickets for the 8:00 bus to Valencia, which was supposed to take 10 hours. We planned to spend one night in Valencia and then catch another bus to Merida the following morning (another 10 hour ride). To start with the bus left an hour late, and then around 6:00pm, when we thought surely we were almost at Valencia, a huge traffic jam started and our bus was not moving at all for the longest time. There was very little communication between the bus drivers and the passengers, so we are not sure what was going on, but from what we could figure out the road was closed for some reason and traffic was not getting through. Our 10 hour bus ride turned into 23 hours and we finally pulled into Valencia at 8am the following morning. The good news was we had saved ourselves a night’s accommodation in Valencia but the bad news was we were exhausted (the seats were very cramped and hard to sleep in) and still had another 10 hour bus ride ahead of us.

We quickly perused all the bus companies and found out that the next one leaving for Merida departed at 11:00am so we bought tickets and had three hours to kill before the bus left. Our planned arrival time in Merida was 8pm, and given our problems finding a room everywhere else in Venezuela, we decided to try and make a reservation. I left Lincoln to guard the bags while I went to the call centre to call every place in our guide book. Only one of them had a room available and it was a triple for almost double what we have been paying so far, and it was only available for one night. What the heck, at least we would have a room for us when we arrived and we could look for another place tomorrow. I reserved it and promised the lady we would be arriving at 10pm (I thought two hours grace would be enough). I also called Mom & Dad from here since I hadn’t talked to them in a while and was craving a familiar voice amidst all the chaos we have been experiencing in the past few days.

The bus again left an hour late, which is turning out to be the norm here (which surprises us because in all of the lesser-developed countries in South America we have visited on this trip the buses always left pretty much on time; why are they always late here?). We seemed to take a long route to Merida (Lincoln was tracking where we were on his GPS) and did not end up arriving until 11pm, three hours later than the scheduled arrival time. I was worried that the hotel would have given our room away but when the cab dropped us off they were still waiting for us to arrive. The cab driver was very friendly and had a huge old car (there are tons of huge old cars here – Chris would love it). The guy at the front desk at the hotel (Posada La Montaña) was really friendly as well, and our room was nice. We already felt better! 41 hours after starting our journey we had finally arrived in Merida! We both had hot showers (a treat since the last two places we had stayed didn’t have hot water) and collapsed in bed for a much needed good night’s sleep.