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El
Tisure (2 day excursion) |
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Horseback riding and hiking
This is a nice and panoramic tour through
the mountains and the magical region of El Tisure, where the
famous local artist Juan Felix Sanchez (who died in 1997), used
to live. Juan Felix Sanchez was a naïf artist and built
the amazing stone chapel dedicated to the Virgen de Coromoto
in San Rafael de Mucuchies. This is actually his second chapel,
a replica of the first one, that was built two decades before
in the remote hamlet of El Tisure. It is just a few hundred
meters away from the isolated house where the artist
used to live. |
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The
tour starts in Merida and a jeep will take us for a one
hour drive up into the Paramo (Moorland) to San Rafael de
Mucuchies (3140mts), where we will visit the second stone
chapel of Juan Felix Sanchez. In Mucuchache (3200mts), just
5 minutes further by jeep, we will find the horses or mules
waiting for us to start the mountain ride on the way to
El Tisure. The trail passes through a colored wood and Paramo
vegetation. The Paramo characterizes a vegetation type that
occurs between the upper limit of continuous, closed-canopy
forest (cloud forest) and the upper limit of plant life
that is characterized by tussock grasses, large rosette
plants, shrubs with evergreen, and cushion plants. This
vegetation type is scattered along the crests of the highest
mountain ranges or on isolated mountaintops between about
3000 mts and 5000 mts. The Venezuelan Paramos are rich in
Frailejones (Espeletia), a typical plant with white soft
leafs. The highest point we will reach in the tour is at
the pass of La Ventana (The Window), at an altitude of 4200
meters. Here we will enjoy the amazing scenery of the mountain
chain of l Sierra Nevada National Park. The trail continues
down hill on the way to El Tisure (3250mts), where we will
find the old farm house of Juan Feliz Sanchez. We will camp
for the night next to the house. Just 10-15 minutes away
on foot we will find the original stone chapel created by
the artist.
The second day, in the morning, we will have
time to explore surrounding area, and then start our trip
back. The way back follows more or less the same route of
the first day. A jeep will be waiting for us in San Rafael
to drive us back to Merida.
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