The other main export route from the capital of Táchira passes through the small towns of Lobatera and Colón to Uracá, the terminus of the Táchira Railway leading to Encontrados in Zulia. Lobatera itself is something over 3,000 feet above the sea, on the Maracaibo side of the watershed, up to which the white road zigzags behind the town. Its productions are said to have decreased of late years, but I have pleasant recollections of the agreeable impression produced by these clean and apparently prosperous towns of Táchira, on first arriving there from the lowlands of Zulia, with their miserable huts and muddy, insanitary villages. People, housing, and food alike seemed vastly improved. Colón is the half-way house for arrivals from Uracá, and as a result has several _hoteles_. It is a neat, well-built little town, the surrounding hills and plateaux being chiefly devoted to stock-farming. Some ten miles to the north is the railway terminus in the small town of Uracá, on the edge of the hot lands and very damp in consequence, the mists banking up in the narrow valley nightly; coffee and cocoa seem to be the chief products of the neighbourhood. Both the Encontrados road and that to Mérida pass through the little town of Táriba, about three miles east of San Cristobal, on the north bank of the Torbes. There are no bridges here over the stream, and as a result in time of floods would-be travellers are penned up in San Cristobal, for on both roads one must ford the stream below the town, and on the way to Mérida, a second ford is necessary immediately above; at the latter there is a foot bridge, and when the Torbes is in flood the mules are fairly hauled across the stream on a rope; the strong currents would otherwise carry them down over the rocks. It is interesting to watch and follow a man who knows these fords as he pricks his way along through the shallows, but they are a great hindrance to traffic. Up the Torbes Valley and across the páramo of El Zumbador (8,000 feet), a day’s ride brings one to La Grita (I shall have to refer to páramos again later on). Near the watershed a road branches off to the east to Pregonero, capital of the Uribante district, in a valley whose products range from potatoes and wheat at the top to coffee and sugar at the bottom; out on the plains, too, there are big cattle-ranches whence comes much of the meat consumed in the Andine towns. The district needs roads for its development, and at present is rather an isolated, unvisited region. Vargas or El Cobre is a pleasant little village on the northern or western side of the pass, and its alternative name is said to refer to mines of copper in the hills near by worked by the Spaniards, who made the bells of the little church from the metal.