I have tasted the worst icecream in my whole life, I have made a grown man cry, I have a vague understanding of what surrounds me, there are drunk footballfans everywhere and it all has its own charm. Walking around in this culture of unfamiliarity with the music from home in my ear, creates this hallucinogenic state of mind where the eyes does not see what the ears hear.

Mérida is famous for at least two things: the worlds longest cable car and the biggest icecream shop in the world. I have yet to experience the cable car - I was supposed to elevate myself to the altitude of its final destination today, but my companion chose not to and I woke up to late. The weather is not really that good either. Since my previous attempt to reach 4900 meters failed, the easiest way to reach this kind of altitude is to use the cable car. The end station is situated some 5000 meters above sea level, depending on who you ask, and I am sure that this altitude will both bring a nice chill and staggering sights. Overlooking the Sierra Nevada and Mérida city from the top would give some great visual pleasures and if I am lucky, some of these pleasures can be manifested on a photo.

The icecream shop, is not the biggest in the world per se, but it is registered in The Guiness book of records because it has the most flavors in the world. I haven’t read how many different flavors that are registered, but some say that there are approximately 800 of them. Most people would get a running mouth from the previous sentence, but walking through the shop and looking at all the different flavors would stop the water from running pretty fast. Flavors like Meat, Squid, Cheese and Guiness (the beer) are not all flavors for the fainthearted. They do normally just display around 70-80 flavors a day but they have all the flavors posted on a huge wall for everyone to see. Imagine - eating a regular icecream, with 3 scoops of ice twice a day. Even at this tempo, it will take you around 125-135 days to taste all the different flavors they have. That is a long time and that is a lot of flavors. As I was looking through the "flavors of the day", I decided to try out the worst taste I could find. Among all the flavors that day, it was not particularly difficult to choose the worst and I had to decide on my second flavor. It had to be plain strange and I realized that this was a bit more difficult task. There are so many strange flavors to choose between and I ended up picking a flavor that normally is not associated with icecream. The third scoop had to be the sweet one and kind of normal icecream flavored kind of icecream. So what did I end up with? Salmon as the worst I could find, spaghetti with cheese as the strange one and a heart from some sort of a fruit (I have really no idea of what kind of fruit it was) as the third one. Luckily the order of the icecream were arranged so that the worst taste was at the bottom, so it wouldn’t contaminate the other scoops. The fruit heart scoop was nice, the spaghetti one had chunks of spaghetti in it and tasted slightly of cheese and the salmon one? Normally I like salmon, and I gulp down salmon sushi whenever I can get hold of it, but when salmon is mixed with icecream, some crazy chemical reaction must occur. The taste was sickening, I almost had to vomit and the knowledge of it beeing salmon mixed with ice, did not make the situation better. I still think there are flavors that are even worse than this and I think we will have a competition before I leave Mérida, where we should try to locate and eat the worst flavored icecream. Let’s see.

I have caused havoc on Venezuela and been an active part in raising the numbers of unemployment. The result of me complaining about the trip to los llanos, was that the guide would get fired. Shocking as this was to me, that was definitely not my intention - at all. All I wanted was a little bit of discount and maybe the satisfaction of making future trips, of the same kind, a more pleasant adventure for the future guest. I wanted to be the good samaritan but I ended up as el Diablo himself. The image of Julio, the guide, walking down the street with his jaw scraping the pavement, is not a sight that I will forget quickly. Greeting me in a less than cheerful manner, as I was about to enter a shop, he was not exactly excited to see me, but he still made the effort. Talking jibberish in a language that I do not fully understand made me realize that he was upset about something. "You have taken away my job, I have no cash, no money and I cannot pay the rent for my apartment. Why would you do this? If you had a problem with me, you should have come to me and I would pay you from my own pocket. You didn’t have to tell my boss. Now I have no job, nowhere to go and I have to live on the streets like a dog". I didn’t know what to say or do, other than apologize and try to tell him that I really did not have this in mind when I complained. I tried to calm him down and tell him repeatedly that this must be a mistake and that I would try to talk to his boss, who was the same guy that I complained to. Getting back to my hostel, I had a chat with the manager and I told him that it seemed a bit hard to let the guide go, just because of this. He told me that it have happened before, some time ago, and that he cannot accept unprofessional behavior from his guides. Fair enough - I won’t interfere in his business and I will definitely not tell him what to do, but I told him to re-evaluate his actions and asked him to consider getting him back again. I am not in Venezuela to get people fired and beeing a guy with a conscious mind I did not at all feel good about this. After a conversation with both the guide and the manager, after some words, that I can only assume would be Latin American swearwords, after some tears (not from me), after a friendly chat with only the guide and a few pads on the back, some hugs and handshakes later, everything turned out OK. He got his job back and I got a discount. Observing this scenery, while beeing in the middle of it, was a bit weird, though. I need to learn how to deal with problems in this part of the world. They apparently handle things in a different way down here.

For the time beeing, the Copa America 2007 is on in Venezuela. This means that 12 teams in the American region, will compete for 20 days, shedding blood, sweat, tears and a hell of a lot of Latino temper. For those who are unfamiliar with what Copa America is: it is the American version of the European Cup or the World cup of football. The streets have been packed with drunk Peruvians and people are driving around in their noisy cars honking their horns even more loudly than normally. I thought the South Americans were a quite collection of human beeings, when it came to partying, but the occasional passed out drunk guy is also to be found in this part of the world. Filling the streets with joy, shouting, flags, drinks and a lot of friendly hugging behavior (to be honest I am a little confused of if it is football fans hugging or a bunch of gay guys - Mérida is apparently the gay capital of Venezuela), the football fans are definitely painting the city with many different colors. It is nice, though - no one have mugged me yet, no one have forced a drink down my throat and no one have tried to start a conversation about any football game, in spanish.

The only reason I am still in this town, it feels like I have been here forever, is because I am taking some spanish lessons. The language is way more difficult than I imagined and I have no idea of what the creators of this language were smoking. This is by far the most implicit language I have encountered as every important word seems hidden, is removed or is just not supposed to be in the sentence at all. There is a one letters difference between "horse" and "hair" and one letters difference between "old" and "I travel". I have told countless number of people, that I have a brown horse and that I am old. I have a bit of a problem trying to explain how come I have a horse, when I am allergic as well. I am walking around most of the time, finding my person beeing very much the same as the character "Manuel" in Fawlty Towers. I have no problems saying "Qué" and "is OK" and would normally do exactly the opposite of what anyone tells me in spanish. I am getting there, though. I have bought my first novels in spanish and I am slowly picking it up. The enormous amount of very short words, though, are still hard to put in the correct place in a sentence, but I guess I should just stop asking questions about how and why, and accept that this is the way the spanish people normally waste their time. Trying to say the sentence "I don’t know if you can do that" translates into the very strange sentence in spanish: "Yo no sé si tu puedes hacer eso". Somehow they have fallen in love with these short words. Strange people.

I really need to get out of this place soon. I have grown to comfortable here and I know that I need to start moving soon. I have had my time in this place but my focus have not been exploring the city. I have spent most of my time here at the hostel, talking to the various personalities that comes and leaves but now it is my turn to be the one leaving. I have become one of the elders here and this is not what I want. I will decide during the next couple of days where I will be heading off to and I hope that I can leave during the weekend. Mérida has been, for me, the starting point for 1 failed expedition, 1 unsuccessful trip to los llanos and a very difficult start in spanish. I am looking forward to leave, but I am also a bit reluctant, as the place and the people here are so nice. My inspiration is slowly fading away and that is always a sign of entering the comfort zone - and that is not where I want to be.

The rain is getting more and more frequent and I would like to work a bit on my tan. The climate here in the mountains is chilly and is definitely different from the climate in los llanos, where you would break a sweat just by waking up.