Holy Week in Caracas

As I said in my last post, this has been Holy Week. Since most everything - well, schools and the archives at least - were closed for the week, a friend and I took the opportunity to check out some of the sights around the city. A week ago Saturday we took the bus to El Hatillo, a little tourist town outside of Caracas. I had been there before (there are some pictures from there in a previous post), but it's a charming place and I was happy to go again. Then on Monday we took the teleferico (cable car) to the top of Avila and then took a Jeep ride partially down the other side of the mountain to a little town called Galipan. There wasn't much there except some vendors selling jams and flowers and a couple of restaurants. The things to eat there are pernil and fresas con crema (pork and strawberries with cream). Yum! There is also not much at the top of Avila. There are a couple of restaurants and a few food booths and a couple of stores. There is also an ice skating rink called Avila Magica. And there is an old hotel called Humboldt Hotel, named after Alexander von Humboldt, a German baron/scientist/geographer who traveled around Venezuela and other places in Central and South America between 1799 and 1804. The hotel is not in use; however, for 5.000Bs ($2.33) you can tour part of it. We did not do that. Instead we went back down the mountain and visited Quinta de Anauco or the Caracas Museum of Colonial Art. But here's what the hotel - which can be seen from anywhere in the city - looks like. We also got lucky and the clouds drifted away enough so that we could see a little bit of the Caribbean from the top of Avila. If you look closely in the picture you can see a little bit of blue ocean through the clouds.

Quinta de Anauco is a house that was built in 1797 and donated to Venezuela in 1958 with the proviso that it would forever serve as the headquarters of the Museum of Colonial Art of Caracas. The house was restored and furnished with 18th century art and furniture. As you can imagine - I thought this was a wonderful place. It is the best museum I've seen in Caracas and is way better than the casa natal or birthplace of Simon Bolivar. Here's a couple of pictures just to give you a feel for the place. One of the interesting things about the house is that it is representative of the period that I am studying - late colonial and early independence. For example, in the dining room were cups from the hacienda where coffee was served for the first time in the valley of Caracas. Following the wars of independence the economy of Caracas shifted from a reliance on cacao to one where coffee played a much more important role because during the wars the cacao fields had been nearly destroyed and coffee trees produce fruit much faster after planting than do cacao trees. There was also a mural rom with frescoes from 1828 with scenes from the new republic.

Well, I'll fill in the rest of the week tomorrow. It's getting late and I need to be up and on the metro early tomorrow morning. I found out this afternoon that Wednesday is another holiday - I'll have to find out more about that.

saludos de Caracas.