Alberto Guillén
Paragliding, Mountains, Rock-Climbing
Alberto, a 30 year old Merideño, has spent much of his life exploring the area around the city and finding new ways to make his heart beat just a little bit faster. During his early 20s, he served on a local Search and Rescue team, getting to know all of the famous trekking routes around the city, and learning mountaineering from some of the best instructors in Venezuela. He served as a guide for many trips up to Bolìvar and Humboldt and the countless other peaks in the Sierra Nevada. During this time, he was also starting to rock climb, and in 1994 he won the Pan-American International Rock Climbing Tournament in Colombia, and again in 1995 and 1996. He has climbed in Spain, England, France, at various sites in the United States, and all over South America as well, and today still instructs in his spare time. For the past five years, he has been a licensed paragliding pilot, competing in national and international tournaments, teaching novices how to fly, and taking visitors on exciting tandem flights over our beautiful valleys.
Eli Larrucea
Mountains, Café/Catatumbo, Los Llanos, Amazonas
Eli was born in Puerto La Cruz, on the north-eastern coast of Venezuela. When he was a young child, his parents moved to the Basque Country in Spain and he spent much of his childhood there. He returned to South America as a teenager, and eventually came to Mèrida to begin studying Architecture at the University of the Andes (ULA). However, two years into his studies, he caught the traveling itch and moved south into the Venezuelan Amazon to live with the Yekuana, an indigenous group located mostly in Bolívar State along the Alto Paragua River. There he lived for two years in the jungle and started a school to teach Spanish and distribute medicine to the locals. Again, he caught an itch to move on and so he moved back to the Caribbean coast close to Cumaná in Sucre State. There he spent a year exploring the magnificent Peninsula de Araya and living in the coastal mountains. Eventually, he came back to ULA to finish his degree, but by this time, he had grown accustomed to a nomadic lifestyle, and so he spent a few years living in simple homes in the mountains surrounding Mérida, learning the highland routes up to Pico Bolívar, Humboldt, etc., and living off of the land. In 1991, Eli opened one of the first adventure tour companies in Mérida in order to make a living doing what he loves: sharing his vast and intimate knowledge of Venezuela with visitors from everywhere and anywhere. A tour with Eli means that you could be wrestling with an anaconda, puffing your way up a mountain, or relaxing in one of the dozens of natural hot springs he knows in Mérida.
Jack Miller
Coffee/Catatumbo, Pueblos Del Sur
Jack lived for most of his life in Phoenix, Arizona, where he served as a guide for big-game hunting and catch and release river fishing. His hobbies included racing cars and motocross. In 1994, he had a change of heart about sport hunting and decided that he needed a change of scenery as well. He moved to Mérida and began guiding trips into the local mountains in English and Spanish. Today, he is building his own small farm on a 20 acre plot in the middle of the Caña Brava rainforest, where he is cultivating coffee, cacao, oranges, and pineapples. Traveling with Jack is will be a memorable experience filled with rugged jeep rides, lush green jungles, and detailed descriptions of local flora and fauna.
Lorenzo Adam
Los Llanos, Catatumbo, Amazonas
Lorenzo was born in the industrial city of Maracaibo, spent part of his childhood in metropolitan Caracas, and then as a teenager, moved to the relatively isolated countryside around Cumanà and Ciudad Bolìvar. From a very young age, he developed a love for music and nature. In his early 20s, he started singing for a local rock band, and later moved on to become the lead singer of a Latin big band group. His music took him to Europe for a few years, where he lived mostly in Italy, singing and traveling. In his 30s, he moved to the United States where he worked as a bird trainer, specializing in parrots. After learning Italian and English, he decided he missed his native country and moved back to Venezuela, where he started working with Guaguancò in 1995. He started working strictly as a guide to Los Llanos, where his expertise in birds could be applied to the hundreds of species that make their home there. Today he guides excellent tours to Catatumbo and Amazonas as well, where he has gotten to know the locals and the wide variety of ecosystems in those parts of the country.
Margorye Cardenas
City Guide
Margorye is a 20 year old native Merideña who studies Applied Mathematics at the University de Los Andes. She has worked at Guaguancò for a year and a half, learning about all the routes and tours that are of interest to visitors. She speaks Spanish and English and has not yet decided whether or not to take up a third language as well. When she is not working at the agency or solving advanced math problems, she is usually on one of the hundreds of beaches on the Venezuelan Caribbean coast, book in one hand, and daiquiri in the other.
Rosalba Peña
Office Manager
Rosalba was born in Mérida and has lived here for her entire life. She was one of the first women to join two locally elite mountaineering groups: the Condor Mountaineering Group (1978), and the internationally renowned Andean Rescue Group (class of 1980). As a member of both of these groups, she learned all of the trekking and climbing routes in the Sierra Nevada and the Sierra Culata ranges which surround Mérida. Rosalba now manages the day to day operations of Guaguancó, arranging guides, and ensuring that the tours run smoothly.
Wuendy Cardenas
City Guide
Wuendy is a 21 year old native Merideña who is currently studying Modern Languages in the University of the Andes. She enjoys relaxed days at the beach and a wide variety of literature and music, but her passion is learning about other cultures, which is why she is studying languages and working in a tourism agency.