SPOTS OF CARACAS

Picture taken from: Armando Sanchez
The Avila, the main Natural Monument of our city, Caracas, also is inspiring for nameless poets, artists, composers and hikers, but all admirers of this wonderful mountain.

The variety of tones it shows us every day awes the eye: green, blue, grey, red, they all change with the weather.

It’s our symbol of physical and spiritual identity, we wear it everywhere we go. We, the people of Caracas, feel the Avila as a part of us, is always deep within, like a loving father.

Around the 60s, it was officially declared a National Park, which puts it on a rank that makes mandatory its preservation, according to many rules and laws.

Its visitors have always climbed it for a lot of different entrances, for them to be able to explore its more know areas through determined paths. Since the 50s, with the cableway opening, the attendance of visitors move mostly to this system.

With the construction of the Humboldt Hotel, another big icon for the mountain and the city was installed. It is said that when it was recently opened, the way between the arrival-to-the-top station and the hotel was connected with funiculars, this made the trip more comfortable.

Nowadays, there is a beautiful walkable boulevard from which, on clear days, we can see the city of Caracas on one side and the Caribbean sea on the other.

Picture taken from: globovision.com

The north slope of the hill, decorates the lands of the coast of La Guaira and its surroundings, the ones that are beautifully spotted from the top of the mountain, how I mentioned before.

Picture taken from: pinterest.com

The first cold winds of December were called “Pacheco”, named after the muleteer with that surname, who used to go down the hill around those days from the town of Galipán with his floral merchandise to sell on the city.

On Easter Time, the Palmeros of Chacao, climb down the Avila, through Sabas Nieves, charged with Palm Leaf Crosses for Palm Leaf Sunday on the entire city of Caracas.

Picture taken from: amiguitoenlinea.blogspot.com

They say that a german doctor which surname was “Knoche”, moved to the Avila where he made his research and they even tell he embalmed deceased people; then the children urban legend appeared: “Don’t you stay on the Avila until the night, because Knoche may show up”.

Another emblem of the mountain is the Cross of the Avila, which was place on it in 1963. It was the idea of the North American engineer Ottomar Pfersdorff, who worked on the Caracas’ Electricity Central. The cross went through several locations, until it finally found its current spot, the Papelón zone. The tradition marks the lighting of the cross on December 1st every year, by the electricity company, and from there it illuminates Caracas’ nights until January 6th, the Three Kings’ Day.

Many have been the characters that have made the Avila a regular trip, among them there is the famous doctor and medical trainer Federico Milá de la Roca, who kept climbing the hill until his very old age. I remember seeing him go up to Los Venados by walk at 85 years old approximately.

This emblematic natural and spiritual monument of our city, as I already said at the beginning, has been an inspiration to many artists: poets like Aquiles Nazoa, Andrés Eloy Blanco and Manuel Díaz Rodríguez, have dedicated their writing to the hill, and for painters like Cabré is a never-failing muse, and that’s just a few of the thousands who made of their work a permanent tribute to the immeasurable Avila.