After two bus trips - one very, very bumpy and one very, very long and freezing from the air con - we arrived in Merida at about 7am. Merida is much cooler than anywhere else we had been because it's at altitude 1,600.

After a day of checking out the town, especially the bakeries (cheese and ham is the only sandwich option here too) we decided we needed to get some trips in...

The first one was to see Catatumbo lightening - basically lightening that happens without any thunder (it's much better than it sounds) due to weather systems.

We were picked up at 6.30am by our guide, Alan, the butterfly catcher and wildlife expert (he´s found a new species of butterly which he´s named, luckily it´s not called Alan). We were taken to our vehicle for the trip - a Dragonman Truck! We traveled on the truck with some hyper English girls, the Dragoman guides, a Belgium family and Alan, it was an interesting mix.

The truck went through amazing mountain and jungle terrain, we stopped to catch some butterflies along the way which Alan was very enthusiastic about, and then arrived at South America´s largest lake, and it started to pour. Alan's prediction of the rain stopping in 24 mins was sadly not correct, think it was more like an hour so the Vodka, Rum (or Ron as it's called here) was passed round to help the time pass. When the rain finally stopped and we got on our tiny speed boats to take us to the floating village where we were going to spend the night. The lake was HUGE, we saw dolphins and monkeys plus loads of birds and butterflies and the lightening, it had already started (usually starts about 2am)

After about 2 hours we got to the village and on to our shack for the night. We pulled up a pew and watched the light show. It was impossible to take pictures of the lightening cause it was so fast but it was amazing. We slept in hammocks on the balcony of the building covered in mosi nets and got up at 5am to see the lightening again. Then it was off back down the river for more dolphins and monkeys and back home via a sugar factory and tabacco factory.

We booked into a cheap posada, had a much needed shower got some sleep and got up at 6am for our next trip to Los Nervados - a tiny village in the moutains.

We took the the world´s longest cable car up to 4,000 feet and then we treked for 4.5 hours across mountainous terrain, at one point we were about 4,500 m heigh! we slept in Los Nerados - 2,700m - it was freezing even with 5 blankets on the bed! The next day our legs were just a little sore so we got a jeep back to Merida!

That night we decided we'd done everything we wanted to (well could afford to) in Merida so headed to the bus terminal for a bus to Maracibol. That makes 7 nights sleeping in a different place - we're getting about!