Such Great Heights

Yesterday we took a field trip to the mountains. We had to get up early (for not having any school) and meet at the school where the travel guide and bus would meet us. I realized I had not included the view from my specific apartment, so here it is.

It was a longer bus ride to the mountains than I first anticipated, but then I remembered that you can't go up to high altitudes very quickly or else you'll get sick. So we went the round about healthy way. We stopped at a good photography area on the side of the road. The road amused me and scared me because it was so winding and there was hardly, if at all, a guard rail. And the bus still zooms along at whatever pace it feels like. It was sunny this morning, and so we anticipated a good day. Here is me at one of the rest stop areas.

And prettier pictures of the general mountain area.

We continued to drive, and then came to a little restaurant and gift shop that the travel guide said was superb. I call him the travel guide because he is personally hired by Venusa to aid us with any travelling we might like to do. This is not only for excursions scheduled by the program, but also if we want to do any other activity or visit any other place, we can go to him and he can find the best rates and places for us to go, and how we can get there, if we aren't going in a large group. This is so we are not tempted to accept travel offers from random people who might not follow through on the deal and rip us off our money and leave us stranded in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, we arrived at the restaurant, and it was very well-to-do for a Venezuelan restaurant. It was a pretty place, with gardens and art, and of course, areas open to the sky. However, the temperamental weather kicked in and it was starting to rain by the time we got there. It was getting colder, and almost everyone wanted hot chocolate. This turned out to be the right choice for this restaurant, because their hot chocolate was exquisite. I'm thinking I'll make it like this from now on.  What they do is serve cocoa and milk mixed in a cup with sugar packets on the side, and you can add the sugar yourself depending on how much you want. Americans are not accustomed or preferential to bitter hot chocolate, so naturally we all added all three packets, but not before sampling it without them first. Here is what it looked like.

The food was also ver good.  What I had was roast chicken, stuffed with cheese and tomatoes and covered in a mushroom sauce, with boiled potatoes in an herb sauce and beet rice on the side.  The beet rice was kind of weird.

After the restaurant, it was still raining and kind of cold, so we had to kind of edit our plans for the mountains.  Instead ofwalking everywhere, we would drive to their historic Condor Park.  We came to cages with condors inside of them, and we went in a building to watch a movie about the Condor, in English.  Our travel guide then asked if we wanted to go see the snow at the top of the mountains, and we said yes.  The drive to the top of the mountain was treacherous.  There was only enough room on the road for one car, and there was definitely no guard rail by this point.  Many times we passed cars with centimeters of space between us and them.  As we got higher and higher, the engine struggled even more and more.  Eventually we found a place at the top for them to let us off to take pictures.  There was a little snow, and it was freezing, and we couldn't catch our breath.  Snow ball fights occurred. Some people dared to climb all the way to the top of the mountain, but I got dizzy about one tenth of the way there, and decided that I didn't want to be sick and cold for the two hour drive back.  So I took the typical photo of happiness in the freezing mountains, and waited for the bus to find some place to turn around.

We were up almost 15,000 feet that day.  Eventually the bus came back, people started to climb down the mountain, and we started to leave.  It seemed a little less frightening than the way up.  It was also getting dark.  We stopped at the same restaurant to get another hot chocolate and sit by the fire awhile, and then headed the last stretch home.  One of the girls who had climbed to the top got sick, so she sat in the front of the bus for the rest of the trip, because apparently it helps.  We got home eventually and we were exhausted. Absolutely spent. I don't know how people managed to find the energy to go out that night.  I think they keep us busy on purpose, to discourage it.

They will see us wavin from such great heights
Come down now, they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
Come down now
But we'll stay