We arrived off the night bus from Maracaibo at around 6.30am. Throughout the night the air-conditioning was on so low we had to put every piece of clothing we had in our day sacks on just to compensate, fortunately there was no-one trying to sell anything on the bus. The last bus we took to Maracaibo had a guy who stood up for 40 minutes, like a market trader, selling toothbrushes and toothpaste. No joke.

Merida is a university city and is also the adventure capital of South America . It is surrounded by mountains, including the country's highest summit Pico Bolivar and has a lovely temperate climate. It is the dry season and is around 24 degrees but snow still graces the top of a few of the peaks that surround the town. The hillsides are cloaked in dark green forest. It is a very picturesque place and we look out on it all from our room's balcony at our hostel. The city itself has very few high rise and reminds me of some of the cities in Bolivia, there aren't many Western chains and most shops seem independent. There aren't too many points of interest in the city though either, the main square, like most in this part of the world is called Plaza Bolivar, where the small cathedral stands and there are some smaller squares and churches dotted around but most people are here for the extreme sports available. Canyoning, paragliding, mountaineering, mountain biking and also safari trips to the low-lying savannah plains of Los Llanos are all available. We thought about doing Los Llanos but as we did the Pantanal in Brazil, which is similar, so we decided against it, but most people we spoke to that have done it thougt it was incredible - they even saw Anacondas, which might be a reason in itself to go, or not .

One of the great things about Merida is that it has an ice-cream shop, Heladeria Coromoto, that holds the world record for number of flavours, nearly 1,000. These include all your standard fare but also beef, hot dog, potato and cheese. A friend had chicken and rice flavour, he said it was gross. Julie and I had three scoops each, it is a cool place though I was disappointed to find that the Sambuca flavour had run out.

If you come to Merida to ride the Teleferico (the cable car) like we did then you are going to be disappointed. It has been shut since August 2008 due to some safety problems and there as yet is no date to reopen. Despite our research before arriving we hadn't seen anything about it being closed, or from the locals we spoke to in Maracaibo, so we spent our first day in the town getting orientated. The next day we took an extreme mountain biking experience, which started about 35km from town in a village called Jaji. From there we climbed off road to the top of the beautiful mountain range nearby . Supported by a 4x4, the driver and a guide, Julie and I were the only particpants and we shortly realised why. It was hell.

The trip in total was about 42km, with the first 27km all uphill. Portions were so steep that if you stopped it was difficult to start again. Parts of the track were in the shades of woodland and were quite muddy, it was a dirty business getting through them. Julie sought refuge in the truck for several parts, stowing the bike in the rear. I fought on, I swear I nearly threw up. As we climbed further the cloud cover would creep in and cool the 24 degree air, it was bliss. Fortunately the last 15km is by road and all downhill, sweeping swiftly down the mountain twisting and turning around hairpin bends that the Italian coast would have been proud of. The views were spectacular. We came down so fast that you could feel the temperature increase as we dropped over 2,000 metres through the scattered clouds into bright sunshine. We arrived in the settlement of San Juan, which has the only salt lagoon in the country . It is an emerald green and we eat a very late lunch by its shore and downed a few beers with our guides.

From here we have been desparately trying to arrange a trip to Angel Falls, which was difficult to do outside of Venezuela. We thought we had it all organised but at the last minute it fell through due to a rubbish tour operator we liaised with, so we had to scramble around and talk to other tour companies. Eventually we have it all reorganised, it is expensive to do Angel Falls any way you do it. We have decided to travel from Caracas, where we go tonight on another night bus, and fly down in a couple of days though it is far cheaper to get to Ciudad Bolivar by bus (either from Merida or Caracas) and then join the tours from there into the Canaima National Park where Angel Falls stands. As we are pushed for time and it's Julie's birthday we have decided to pay a bit more and fly down, it also means we don't have to suffer a night bus back to Caracas the day before we fly down to Argentina .

In addition to the problems organising Angel Falls we have had other issues to contend with too, particularly around money. Venezuela has a black market for changing cash. The rate you get on the black market is around 75%+ higher than what you would get with the national exchange rate, i.e. from a bank/cash machine (official rate for 1US to 2.5BF whereas on the black market it is 1US to 4.5 / 5, and 1UK pound is officially 3.12 and on the black market it is 5.5 / 7 depending on where you change). This is a problem as things cost comparably with Western European prices 'officially', but if you are paying having changed on the black market everything becomes very cheap. So as we didn't have much US dollars on us we originally thought that there would be no chance of us being able to raise any money to make things cheaper. However, our hopes were raised of a way round following a conversation with some Germans in our hostel.

Some of the posadas in town have European bank accounts, you transfer what you want to change into them from your own account and they will give you the black market rate . I can't name the posadas as I think it isn't all above board but if you ask around people will point you in the right direction. Unfortunately it takes three working days to clear and they don't give you the cash until it appears in their account, as we are not here for that long in Merida we couldn't do it so are left paying the official costs for everything. Worse still we have had an absolute nightmare trying to use cash machines in Venezuela. Half don't work and a lot of the others don't seem to like to take forieign cards. After nearly 2 hours of walking around we eventually found one that worked, Banco Mercantil. Thank god as we had no way of raising any money unless we paid for everything by credit card, which would have been really bad as they add on between 8% and 14% for every transaction. The other problem would have been that many places, including the bus companies only take cash. Anyway, we have had to swallow it and move on. The cash machines also ask for the first or last 2 digits of your personal identification code, it took us a while to work out that this meant passport number for foreigners and citizen number for those from Venezuela. No-one knows why and how on earth the banks know your passport number is also a mystery. 1984.

So far our impression of Venezuela has been that of a very civilised country with really friendly people, many of which speak a little English. You stand in queues in shops and people will strike up conversations with you while you wait, it is really nice. Many will start up about their political situation and it seems to be a real love hate thing with Chavez.