As you know, we spent the New Year in Mérida, Venezuela. It’s a mountainous town located in the Venezuelan Andes. We had heard a lot about its tourism and it’s supposed to be one of the better developed areas in the country. The Mérida airport is closed, so we flew into Vigía, which is about a 2 hour drive away.

The entire town is surrounded by mountains (sort of like Caracas) and apparently the snowy season is in June and July. This was the only mountain – Pico Bolívar – that had snow and I was told it keeps it year round.

There are numerous public spaces/parks – another similarity to Caracas and an abundance of greenery.

The town’s main attraction is the world’s longest and highest cable car system, which lucky for me is currently under repair. You can tell that a lot of the town’s tourism was based on this because there are about 50 hotels, like the one you see above, within a 1 minute walking distance of the entrance.

During the day, the weather was very nice and sometimes even hot. But, every night the sky was completely clouded and it became a freezing – well by my standards – 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, as we were making our final descent in Miami, I started to get as excited as my little guy who spent the entire 2.5 hours saying “Mommy, we’re flying!” What I initially thought was a feeling of new adventure, was really a comfort in going back to the familiar. Anyone who’s been to Miami International Airport knows that it’s in perpetual construction and there’s always something new – even that felt familiar.

When we were driving on I-95 to go home, which has also had some work done to it in the past 18 months, it all felt the same. I knew the exit signs, I knew how much farther we had to go, I knew the crazy drivers who were going to speed past to get in front of you only to slam on their brakes. Before we even made it home, I finally accepted that the word I’d been avoiding is that this felt like home.

I used to think of myself as a nomad. I had no trouble packing up and moving to a new place when I felt the time was right. I never really felt like I was leaving a home behind, I was simply going to create a new one wherever I went. Well, I don’t know if it’s age or the fact that Venezuelan society is a bit more difficult to infiltrate , but I now know that for the time being, South Florida is where I consider to be my home.

My first few days there were blissful. The humidity was at about 70% and the temperature was over 100F. It was normal…expected. I didn’t want to anything and I wanted to do everything. The latter is what got me into trouble the remainder of my trip. This picture is the view from my bedroom window. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s home (wow, that’s 4 times in one post ).