I slept yesterday with the impressions and the feelings of the experience of my mountain adventure in mind. I woke up this morning with the same impressions and feelings and the certainty that I am still alive and in my car. The pictures I have taken will not do justice and maybe not my words either to the danger I have been in. I am not trying to exaggerate or to produce myself; I am trying to be realistic and objective and remember that I have been always looking up for anything to fall down on me and looking down to estimate the depth, 500 meters at least.

Today was another holiday in Venezuela “Día de la resistencia indígena”, a national holiday. My curiosity brought me to the city center one more time to look for any special activities. Except for four dressed up Indians at the entrance of the church I could not find anything special going on. The elder were still playing chess on the floor and the children playing with the pigeons. The city was empty and quite, like cities are on certain holidays. Together with the anniversary of the city on Friday the population had a four day bridging weekend and was most likely out of town. I just went for a short walk across the main bridge that connected the valley and consequently the city of Merida.

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When I was at the Zoo last week I was handed a map of the city at the parking and noticed the Botanical Garden being close by, in the same area in the north of the city. I did not visit that day and decided to go today. I knew the city quite well by now and had no problems to get back to the area and to the Botanical Garden; I parked the car and paid for the ticket. I had luck with the Zoo, liked it a lot and spent the whole afternoon there and I would have luck again with the Botanical Garden, liked it a lot and spent the whole afternoon there.

I am not a biologist and nor did I make any notes of the descriptions of the various sections or the incredible number of plants, to now write down a list of sophisticated names to fill the page. I am sure though that any biologist would have spent the full day here if not two, and would have appreciated the variety and the natural setting. I am sure my baby Matilda would have wanted to climb up into the trees and hang out the whole day in the ropes of the adventure tree walk. I became friends with the section of the bamboo trees and after my round through the park I decide to sit down and calm down. It worked for about five minutes until a hungry and nervous mosquito disturbed my peace and made me leave.

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I went to the hospital early today and waited for my friends to build up their snack stand, discuss my adventure from the day before again, as I did not have the right words yesterday. I was hungry and wanted another special hamburger menu.

I had to stay another day in Merida and find a mechanic to look after my tires. I had taken a spare set of tires from Brazil, which had been the best out of the four I had before I decided to buy a full new set of four tires for this project. I figured that I had the option to repair the broken tire or switch the set in the front completely with the spare set I had in the trunk.

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