Escaping the city
I saw an article today in the New York Times travel section about Caracas that I thought was worth passing on: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/travel/27caracas.html?e
x=1152421200&en=f001ef1d1d1ee23d&ei=5087&mkt=travellink1.
Although it’s not by any means complete, I think it does a good job of describing the city and has some interesting observations. The picture from the cable car is great too.
The article does not mention two of my favorite places for getting away from the noise and congestion of the city: Parque del Este and Centro de Arte La Estancia. These are both easier to get to than riding the cable car to the top of the mountain and closer to the metro than the trails on Avil
a.
Parque del Este (East Park) is, according to the guide book, 200 acres of paths, gardens, trees, and other attractions like animal displays, a planetarium, and a lake. It is on the grounds of a former coffee hacienda. The picture here is of some people doing tai chi in the park one Saturday morning. I'd love to figure out how to join them even though it looked like a different form than the one I've been studying.
Centro de Arte La Estancia is very close to the park but is private property open to the public. It’s smaller and is also part of a former hacienda. The land is owned by PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil company, who has convert
ed the former house into an exhibition hall 
with a library. The last exhibit I saw there was a display of various twentieth-century buildings of note throughout the Americas. There are areas where you will see people sitting in the shade reading or visiting. It is a quite pleasant place. There is a great variety of trees and flower gardens there as well as a greenhouse with many different kinds of orchids. The first time I was there I went with my friend Gloria and her mom and we came back with bags full of mangos. You can pick or gather fruit that you find there, but you can’t eat it there! There are lots of banana trees as well as coffee and cacao trees. The strange looking tree is cacao. How could such a wonderful food as chocolate come from such a strange looking tree? I've seen the inside of one of the pods. It still doesn't resemble the food we know and love. I'm not really sure of how cacao is processed but I know it involves a good number of steps. I'm told that Venezuelan chocolate is among the best in the world and that although there aren't a lot of first rate processors here Venezuelan chocolate is used by some of the best processors in Europe.
x=1152421200&en=f001ef1d1d1ee23d&ei=5087&mkt=travellink1.
Although it’s not by any means complete, I think it does a good job of describing the city and has some interesting observations. The picture from the cable car is great too.
The article does not mention two of my favorite places for getting away from the noise and congestion of the city: Parque del Este and Centro de Arte La Estancia. These are both easier to get to than riding the cable car to the top of the mountain and closer to the metro than the trails on Avil
a.Parque del Este (East Park) is, according to the guide book, 200 acres of paths, gardens, trees, and other attractions like animal displays, a planetarium, and a lake. It is on the grounds of a former coffee hacienda. The picture here is of some people doing tai chi in the park one Saturday morning. I'd love to figure out how to join them even though it looked like a different form than the one I've been studying.
Centro de Arte La Estancia is very close to the park but is private property open to the public. It’s smaller and is also part of a former hacienda. The land is owned by PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil company, who has convert
ed the former house into an exhibition hall 
with a library. The last exhibit I saw there was a display of various twentieth-century buildings of note throughout the Americas. There are areas where you will see people sitting in the shade reading or visiting. It is a quite pleasant place. There is a great variety of trees and flower gardens there as well as a greenhouse with many different kinds of orchids. The first time I was there I went with my friend Gloria and her mom and we came back with bags full of mangos. You can pick or gather fruit that you find there, but you can’t eat it there! There are lots of banana trees as well as coffee and cacao trees. The strange looking tree is cacao. How could such a wonderful food as chocolate come from such a strange looking tree? I've seen the inside of one of the pods. It still doesn't resemble the food we know and love. I'm not really sure of how cacao is processed but I know it involves a good number of steps. I'm told that Venezuelan chocolate is among the best in the world and that although there aren't a lot of first rate processors here Venezuelan chocolate is used by some of the best processors in Europe.
posted by Sue Taylor at 8:43 AM
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