The bottom of the bare steep-sided ravine is hot and dusty, and on the far side, after a mile or two, the road begins to follow the nearly vertical side, finally narrowing down to a mere path, with a precipice into the torrent below. This lasts for some four or five miles, and the whole stretch takes its name from the most unpleasant part of all, _Las Laderas_, or “the steeps,” just before the San Pablo tributary enters from the south. Here the height of the road above the stream gradually increases, until at length the descent to the side valley is accomplished in a short distance by what is practically a staircase of loose rock, buttressed with logs, while there is a sheer drop on the offside into the foaming torrent beneath; not a pleasant place on a dry day, and almost impassable on a wet one. Once at the bottom, the rest of the way, until more open valleys are reached, is a precipice road, generally, but not always, wide enough for two mules to pass. Beyond Estanques the main valley narrows down to a gorge, but the road climbs over the hills to the side, and at length descends past a tile and brick making yard to the hot valley of the Mucuties with its cacao plantations. A picturesque bridge across the river leads to the parting of the roads, one going up the Mucuties to Tovar, the other down the Chama Valley to El Vigia, and so to the Zulia plains. Tovar forms a local market-centre for the produce of the cocoa and coffee plantations of the valley, but beyond it Bailadores marks the downward limit of the wheatfields which make the top of the Mucuties ravine almost like a European landscape in time of harvest. Northward of Mérida, the Chama Valley has some coffee plantations, but the road soon leaves these, and at Mucuchíes, the highest town in Venezuela (10,000 feet), we are in the region of pasture-land and potatoes, even wheat being absent in these high altitudes. There are a few scattered houses above Mucuchíes, one of which is a small inn known as Los Apartaderos, the best stopping-place to ensure a calm crossing of the pass next day, the winds rising normally towards midday. These high exposed passes are known in Venezuela as _páramos_, a word as to whose precise meaning some doubt appears to exist, though Humboldt’s definition as “all passes above 1,800-2,200 Toises above the sea, where inclement rough weather prevails,” seems to cover the present use of the word. The páramo of Mucuchíes or Timotes over which passes the main road between Mérida and Trujillo is the highest in the Venezuelan Andes, the big wooden cross at the summit being about 14,500 feet above the sea. In the rainy season, owing to the dense mass of clouds on the pass, it is often deep in snow, and woe betide the unlucky traveller whose mule becomes _paramada_ then! The verb derived from the generic name of these high passes is often applied jokingly to an individual who has merely got wet through and is cold and uncomfortable.