HI, travel-loving of #steemit:

There is nothing more thrilling than to board our transportation to start a long excursion that will take us to see beautiful landscapes and face the difficulties and fun moments that every good adventure brings. It's very exciting to see how you put your bags in place, to meet old travelling companions and to see who you got as a seat mate. My brother Leonel and I were about to get on the bus that would take us to our faraway destination since we were in Caracas and our target was in the state of Merida, about twelve hours away... Well, that's what we thought. In fact, the journey lasted a long but much longer time than that and was full of eventful vicissitudes.

Happier than "little carajitos (kids) eating snot", as a popular expression says, my brother and I sat in our seats, after the long session of greetings and questions like: "What happened to the life of...?" or "Why didn't you go for the excursion to...?". We were starting a long journey that was supposed to go by in complete calm. But there was something about that old bus that didn't inspire my confidence.... And I made no mistake: that night we got stranded on an unnamed road with the consequent risk because it is no secret that the roads are dangerous especially at night.... Fortunately, nothing bad happened to us, only we arrived late at the bus terminal in the city of Barinas, where we would stop to board the Toyotas that would take us to the entrance of the Sierra La Culata National Park. When we finally arrived, more than eight hours late, the rustic vehicles were gone and we had to improvise another way to get to the park. The complicated thing was that we were in the middle of the holiday season so it wasn't easy to get a ride to take us there. At last we solved, and got a little bus but we had to travel tight as sardines in a can.

In this picture, the Andes peep a little through the cloudy sky. On that occasion I was part of the excursion organized by the Centro Excursionista Caracas, the Caracas Hiking Center, which had the goal of reaching the summit of three peaks located in the Sierra La Culata National Park, in the Venezuelan Andes, in the state of Merida: the Piedras Blancas (White Stones) peak, also known as Misamán, by its indigenous name, which with its 4,748 meters above sea level is the fifth highest peak in Venezuela, and peaks Los Nevados (The Snowcapped), 4700 Mts. high, and Los Buitres (The Vultures), 4,650 Mts. high, all located within the national park area. We didn´t know by the moments, that strong weather conditions, for which we were unprepared, would stopped us from reaching our destination. That night, a blizzard threw us sleet and the snow made it impossible to climb to the summits planned. But the hard conditions we were able to overcome made this an unforgettable and funny trip.