World Record Ice Cream

The World Record Ice Cream Shop
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Left the campsite after breakfast and headed back to Barinas and out again, this time up through the Venezuelan Andes through virgin forest and the cloud forest.  The latter certainly lived up to its name as the day was very cloudy.  Stopped for an early lunch as many places would be closed for Easter, where once again we had the shaved meat.  The stop was beautiful with the rainforest in the background.  The roads were windy but the scenery was spectucular with rainforest, mountain passes, waterfalls and Andean villages.  At one point the road was next to the bank and you could look down over 1km.  We continued on to the high pass at around 3500m and stopped just before this for wht was described as the best hot chocolate ever.  As I don`t think this I settled for chocolate cake.  We eventually arrived in Merida at 4.45pm and after checking in, Jen, Julie and I went for a walk around town.  Everything was shut but we did manage to track down the ice cream shop.  This is renowned and is in the Guiness Book of World Record for the most ice cream flavours.  It is now close to 1000 flavours although only about 50 are available at any one time.  The wall lists all the flavours and the more interesting ones include Spaghetti with cheese, Ham and Cheese, Shrimps, Viagra(!), Miss Venezuela, Portugal and Lonely Planet.  There are however normal flavours as well and I settled for vanilla chip and a pink one with smartie bits in it (can`t pronounce or spell the name).  Afterwards we headed to dinner and then a night of TV.

Some of the flavours
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Following day had a lie-in and then headed around town seeing what was around.  More was open but it was still fairly quiet.  We came across a wall that was painted very anti-american with the statue of liberty holding bombs and the US flag with skulls instead of stars.  Headed for a late lunch at a mexican and then it was internet time and a Lost session on TV that night.  Sam turned up after a few days off the trip and Nick and herself have bought a 4 bed house for USD40,000 on the Carribean coast of Venezuela.  Talk about a hoiday present!

Anti-American Feelings
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Following day was more of a lie-in and then the post office, lunch and more ice-cream.  This time it was Oreo and Stravberry flavours.  More internet and catching up on things and then another TV night.  It is nice for a change not to have to go out and just relax with cable TV chatting with room mates.

Following morning  I was due to go up on the cable car, the longest in the world.  Woke at 6am and looked out of the window, to rain and clouds.  Thought that there would be very little view to be had so decided to stay in bed.  This turned out to be a very wise decision as apparently once a month, the first 600 people go up for half price.  This is in response to the price and that locals cannot afford it.  Some people from the group came back a few hours later, saying that they couldn`t get on and that people had been camping out since 3am to get tickets.  Given that only 4 cars of 60 people can go up an hour, and the first car up is a 8am and the last back down at 12.30pm it means that not a lot can go up in that time frame. We were also limited by the time as we had to leave at lunch for our drive out of Merida.