October282009
Venezuela's Most Beautiful Women - Photo Gallery, 26 Pictures - LIFE »
LIFE magazine online recently made a gallery highlighting some of our most beautiful women, who have made a big splash in international pageants. Minor correction: the woman in the black-and-white is not Maritza Sayalero, but Tatiana Capote.
August212009
Cangrejo en las rocas
Embarcadero
Faro
Red lobster. :)
It came from the sea!
Urchin
Pelican on the lowdown
Ghost crab
Us
I recently spent a week at Morrocoy, one of our local treasures, over at the northwestern tip of Venezuela. I fell in love all over again with my country. (Not to mention my beautiful bride-to-be). It’s damn worth fighting for.
August52009
A little sincerity
I opened this tumblelog to show off a little bit of the beauty of my country to my foreign friends. And it’s all true. Every single thing I’ve posted here is true, and shows a part of Venezuela that isn’t often reflected on the news abroad.
But unfortunately, what those newscasts show is very true, also. We are in the hands of the government that has undermined democracy by using it, ironically. They claim they want to be inclusive when they are in fact the most excluding government we have ever had. We are in a point in our history where we are paying hundreds of years of imperfect democracy. And we might be slowly sliding back into a dictatorship.
I may have not updated in a while, and I apologize, but it hasn’t been easy to show the true, positive things about my country, when so much ugliness is coming out. Please don’t abandon us, as you didn’t abandon Iran.
Tags: /Venezuela /opinion /government
May242009
May232009
San Javier Valley, Mérida. Bet you already wish you were here. With all due respect to the Swiss, who needs Switzerland?
Tags: /Mérida /Venezuela /tourism /photograph
May182009
The most notorious Andean ever in our history was dictator Juan Vicente Gómez. He ruled Venezuela under the longest and most opressive dictatorship in all of South America: 27 years. As a historic irony, he was born on July 24th, 1857, and he died on December 17th, 1935. Simón Bolívar was born on July 24th, 1783, and died on December 17th, 1830. Freaky. Full biography when you click on the image.
The world’s tallest cable car is in Mérida. It starts in Mérida (the city) at 5,400 feet (1,640 m) and ends near the summit of Bolívar Peak at 15,630 feet (4,765 m), in three stages spanning a length of 7.8 miles (12.f km). Opened in 1960, it has been unfortunately closed to public on August 11, 2008, since the cable system had reached the end of its useful life. You can still make the ascension by foot, if you dare.
I knew there was a reason I wanted to write so much of the Andean region today! It’s the 57th anniversary of the founding of Sierra Nevada National Park in Mérida, which includes the country’s highest peak, Bolívar Peak, with an altitude of 16,690 feet (5,007 m).
The highest road in the country is near Pico El Águila (Eagle Peak) in Mérida, Venezuela’s most mountainous state, which is 13,727 feet (4,118 m) high. There is a monument there that features a condor with an olive crown in its beak, dedicated to Simón Bolívar’s pass through this point in 1813. Photo taken by Erune.
Monument of the Virgin of Peace, in Trujillo. Like I said before, religion is very important in Venezuela. This is the country’s largets statue, if I’m not mistaken. It stands 153 feet tall (46 m) and weighs 1,200 tons, and was inaugurated by presidente Luis Herrera on December 21st, 1983. One of the country’s most beautiful and least known icons.
