Tuesday in Venezuela

After sleeping a few hours, FM and I were awake and down in the lobby for the shuttle back to the airport. The terminal is long and has two sections, one for international flights, one for national flights. Today we were headed to the national flights.

We got in and found Laser airlines. Many people were gathered around, all speaking Spanish! We worked our way forward, got our boarding passes and headed to the gate. Laser tends to stay pretty close to schedule and we left only about a quarter hour late.

We landed in El Vigia about an hour later. Pedro, one of the monastery employees who had worked for a while in Conyers, met us and loaded us into a van. There is a tunnel through mountains to Estanquez that gets us to the monastery in about an hour. Because of recent rains and falling rock, the tunnel was closed, so we started on an alternative route that would take about three hours to travel.

First we moved through a grassy, wooded plain. Pedro explained that off to the right was Lake Maracaibo. If you look on a map you can see that we were to the east of the southern part of the large lake.

We turned on the mountain road and headed into the mountains. There were sheer falls off the side of the road, views of valleys stretching off into the distance, towns perched on the edge of the mountain with colorfully painted houses. We went through Tovar and Las Cruces. (You can find these on a map and see what a long way around this was, in contrast to the fairly straight and short connection between El Vigia and Estanquez. If you focus on Merida on the map, then zoom in and move about, you can find some of these places.)

At Estanquez we began the climb up the final mountain with a series of switch back turns obscured with tall grasses. I learned that drivers are very careful here and give way to oncoming drivers. Pedro knew just what he was doing. (I cannot imagine how I could make it up -- or down -- this road with a stick shift. I think I would burn out two or three clutches each journey.)






A final descent along an even bumpier road took us to the monastery, a beautiful white construction on the side of the mountain. It is a long structure with a bend along the way, all around an open courtyard. Tile floors. White walls. There is no heating or cooling needed -- although some extra blankets or sweaters are useful in the night.




Placido, the abbot, met us and showed us our rooms in the infirmary wing. Each of these rooms has its own bathroom, so they house short-term guests here.

The refectory is a spacious room whose large windows look out on the mountains across the valley. We had lentils, cauliflower, fried plantains, and fruit. The community is small with only 4 solemnly professed monks, one of whom is being treated for cancer in Merida. They have a young, pleasant, energetic postulant; a sister from one of our houses who is staying and helping out with work; and a monk from a Chilean house who has been here several times to help out.

The place felt damp. It is the rainy season and by the late afternoon the clouds had settled into the monastery. There were no mountain views from the windows, only cloud, dripping water.