Current Time in Mérida, Venezuela

Mérida lies in the Venezuelan Andes, in the west of the country, on a long river terrace between the deep valleys of the Chama and the Albarregas. Snow dusted peaks rise on either side, including Pico Bolívar, the highest mountain in Venezuela, and the setting at around sixteen hundred metres gives the city a mild, spring like climate all year, cool at night and often washed by afternoon cloud drifting down from the páramo.

Around three hundred thousand people live here, and Mérida is the capital of the state that shares its name. It is above all a university city, and the presence of tens of thousands of students gives it a young, lively and notably relaxed atmosphere, unusual among Venezuelan cities. Tourism, agriculture, crafts and public administration make up the rest of the economy.

The city was founded in 1558 by a Spanish captain who named it after his birthplace in Extremadura, and it developed slowly as a colonial and religious centre in the mountains, far from the coast and the capital. A seminary founded in the eighteenth century became the University of the Andes, one of the oldest and most respected universities in the country, and academic life has shaped the city ever since. Earthquakes destroyed much of the colonial fabric over the centuries, so the architecture is a mixture of surviving churches, republican era buildings and modern construction, arranged along a grid of streets on the terrace.

The main attraction is one of the most spectacular cable cars in the world. Rising in several stages from the edge of the city to the shoulder of Pico Espejo at nearly four thousand eight hundred metres, it is the highest and longest system of its kind anywhere, carrying visitors from warm valley air to a landscape of rock, ice and thin oxygen in less than an hour. The views over the Sierra Nevada National Park are extraordinary, and the park itself offers hiking, climbing, glacial lakes and the strange velvet leaved frailejón plants that grow in the high páramo.

Around the city, mountain villages such as Jají, Mucuchíes and Los Nevados preserve whitewashed colonial squares, trout farms, weaving workshops and small chapels, reached by roads that wind spectacularly through the Andes. Mérida is also known for an ice cream parlour that entered the record books for offering the greatest number of flavours in the world, hundreds of them, including many made from vegetables and local fruits.

Cultural life includes a much loved traditional festival calendar, the paradura del niño celebrations in January, craft markets and a cuisine of arepas, trout, corn based drinks and pastelitos. The University of the Andes, with faculties spread across the city, remains its heart.

An airport, mountain highways and long distance buses connect Mérida to Caracas, Maracaibo and the Colombian border, and a modern trolleybus system serves the urban corridor.

Mérida is loved for its mountains, its students and the gentle rhythm of Andean life.