Choroní

Today I arrived "home" in Mérida after a 15 hour busride from Choroní, where I spent my semester break vacation. I had an amazing time there and came back with some great new experiences and a lot of beautiful photos to prove it! Since I didn't bring my laptop along, I decided to bring a journal instead so I'd be able to add some of my writing to my blog when I got home.

Here is my first journal entry:

We arrived in Choroní this morning around 11 am. The busride from Maracay (12 hours from Mérida) was about 3 hours long through the jungle along winding mountain passes. There were bamboo stalks nearly scraping the sides of the bus - some of them were as tall as 3 story buildings and as wide around as telephone polls. The jungle was dense and full of plants and thick foliage in a variety of rich green colors, and lots of the leaves were bigger than I was! There were vines too. They hung from cliffs and overhangs somewhere above me and draped over tree branches, dangling down as far as I could see over the mountain's edge. If the music on the bus hadn't been so loud, I'm sure I could have heard noises coming from the jungle...the sounds of the flowing streams hidden somewhere off of the mountain roads, the birds which I'm sure hid camouflaged amongst the plants...and whatever else was out there. The busride overall was scary though, fast and jerky, but worth it. I got to see the Venezuelan jungle, and it was nothing short of magical.

And this is what I saw.

I thought it couldn't get much more mysterious and beautiful, but shortly after arriving in Choroní, we walked to the edge of the Caribbean Sea...

which is journal entry number two (and will be a part of my next post).