The Santo Cristo (Holy Christ) Lagoon in the Andean's mountains of Mérida, Venezuela Part 1
Hello readers!!
This is a trip that my wife Veronica purpose me to do for my birthday, she wanted us to see the dawn of the 31st of December (my birthday) in the magnificent Santo Cristo's Lagoon in the Andean's mountains of the state of Mérida, located in the west part of Venezuela. Our trip started in a small farmer's village called Gavidia which is at 3242 meters above sea level.
We arrived from Mérida to Mucuchies, there we catched a truck that took us to Gavidia in around 30 minutes, it was like 6pm by then, we had a reservation for a house to spend the night before to start the trekking to the lagoon the day after. It was a small and couzy house, made mostly of wood, stones and mud, with tiny windows, this is a very tipycal construction style in the region due to the weather, in the middle of the day the temperature rounds from 15ºC to 18ºC and the nights are from 10º to -2º. In one half of the year rains a lot wich makes it a perfect spot for farmers to cultivate the most notorious product of the region, the potatoes.
It is the morning of the 30th of December, we had a full breakfast and went to the end of the village's road, right there is Mr Jose's house, a very kind and hard working family men who's house is a farm in which he has animals and some crops, he is our guide on this trekking. We set up everything and letting this amaizing valley behind started our 13Km walk to the Holy Christ Lagoon.
These roads are very old, this were the roads the ancient tribes used for moving from one settlement to another, the vegetation is mostly shrubbery, some with amazing pink coloured flowers some blackberry bushes and of course the most famous species of plants in the Venezuelan Andes region the "Frailejon".
This roseta shaped, white cotton like leafs plants grows till the amaizing size of 5 meters and at a very low speed of 1 to 3 cm per year, that makes them a great tresuare for the locals because some of them have more than 2000 years old, interesting huh? Another anecdot is that the ancient tribes used to stuffed there clothes with the Frailejon leafs cause they are waterproof and that cotton like texture makes them the perfect thermal insulation in that time. Note: nobody does it now because is forbidden by environmental law.
At the end of this roads we found the Santo Cristo's valley, an inmense glaciar valley with a small river that runs through it and goes all the way to the Alto of Santo Cristo, which is the highest point of our road and the only way to pass from the valley to the other side of the range at 4200 meters above sea level.
We are bordering the valley, we have to follow the path until it meets with the river.
Some amazing rock formation that makes you feel very tiny.
Do not throw garbage sign.
And the real Stairway to Heaven.
We are almost there.
And finally, we've arrived to the creek.
It's very clear where we are heading, the path is well marked and we can see the "Alto of Santo Cristo" waiting for us to conquer it.
A small pond in the way up, reminiscent from the glaciar that once was here.
Just a little more...
At the very top of the the "Alto" the view gets spectacular, is our last look of the Santo Cristo's Valley.
Here we are Alto of Santo Cristo! Mr Jose is resting and eating a piece of bread, and we found some other explorers at the top.
A few steps later you look out and find this, on my right is the 2 highest Venezuela's mountains, the Humbold peak which is the one with a "half rounded shape" glaciar on it, the biggest glaciar in Venezuela by the way, and at the very bottom of the second photo is the Bolivar Peak the highest mountain of Venezuela having an altitude of 4978 meters above sea level. On my left and behind me is the Anteojos (glases) lagoon, this is one of the most impressive landscape I have seen in my life.
We can see this other species of "Frailejon" that grows at higher altitudes.
It's very common to find this stone structures in all the Merida's Andean mountains, they mark the roads for the explorers.
And with this couple of beauties I said good bye and see you really soon for the second part of this trip where we will arrived to the Santo Cristo's lagoon to spend a night in the most amaizing camping spot and see that wonderful dawn of the 31st of December.
To be continued....