Boede & Baasch (2008) Camino de Carabobo

The Carabobo Trail
Including references to its history, flora,
fauna, anecdotes and illustrations by naturalists
Bellermann, Appun and Goering
By Ernesto O. Boede Wantzelius
Translation by John Holden
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Un tranquilo paraje cerca del lago de Valencia,
A halt on the way near Lake Valencia,
James Mudie Spence, 1871-1872.
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Introduction
The Carabobo Trail, also known as the Spanish Trail, up in the
Coastal Highlands between Puerto Cabello and Valencia, was of vital
importance for Spain towards the end of the 18th and beginning of
the 19th centuries, since it was the main communications route between the central coastal region and the interior of one of its major
colonies in the Caribbean.
Originally known as the Carabobo Trail, it was jointly ordered
built in 1761 by the Spanish Crown and a decree of the Council of
Valencia. In 1801, its upgrading began with changes to the route and
widening to receive wheeled carts. The San Esteban River Valley was
chosen as the new route, and the Trail climbed the Carabobo Mountain to the San Hilario Heights as they were called at the time, to then
descend through the Bárbula Heights to the Cabriales River Valley, in
all a distance of nine leagues –about 43 kilometers– to Nueva Valencia del Rey. The Spanish engineers and surveyors kept to the paths
used since time immemorial by the Indian people to criss-cross the
mountains, and later remodeled and enlarged the road until fit to be
called a royal way. Its construction was begun from both ends, from
the north and from the south, meeting at the San Hilario Heights.
Coming from Puerto Cabello, it passed through the Marín Valley to
the San Esteban Valley, between the San Esteban River and Mount Las
Vigías. Later there would be an alternative route through a pass up
Mount Las Vigías known as Portachuelo. The latter was also used by
the military to reach Fort Mirador de Solano.
Borburata indirectly and Puerto Cabello directly, both of them
key ports for the Spaniards, were vitally dependent on this royal trail.
It was also silent witness to battles and movement of the troops who
used it at the beginning of the 19th Century during the Independence
War. The middle of this last century was the golden age of the Trail
as far as natural sciences were concerned, since it was visited, described and illustrated by a great variety of naturalists, researchers
and explorers from Europe, most of them from Germany, inspired as
they were by the masterpiece of Baron Alexander von Humboldt,
“Reise in die Äquinoktial-Gegenden des neuen Kontinents” (Journey
to the Equinoxial Regions of the New Continent). The San Esteban
Valley was like a paradise with its Carabobo Trail and it was not only
the interest of the world’s naturalists that were awoken, but also European colonists and traders, several Germans settling in the spectacular Valley. They exported mainly cocoa, coffee and cotton, among
many other goods, to the Old Continent through shipping companies
established in the tiny port town of Puerto Cabello, and they also
imported farm machinery.
The Spanish Trail still runs through the extraordinary Valley and
the San Esteban Mountains and, to a great extent, the town of the
same name owes its very existence and is protected by the figure of
the San Esteban National Park, an ancestral territory of the indigenous
Arahuaco and Caribe people, whose petroglyphs decorate rocks on
the mountainside and even within the town itself.
The purpose of this enterprise was to travel the length of the Trail
and also to investigate and document what is actually left of it and
find the remains of the sites of interest that have stood the test of time
as has a large part of the surface, remains of bridges, general stores
and inns, different artifacts of the old days, the cobblestones, containing walls and drainage systems. To achieve this, different journeys
and field trips were made over the space of several years, based on
the bibliographical references of historical data, folklore and the paintings of the naturalists of olden times. It was not always easy to achieve
the goals we had set ourselves in the mountains, because we had to
contend with the typical dangers of the villages around San Esteban
and the shantytown Los Mangos in Bárbula. Interestingly enough, we
were not the only ones to have suffered this bitter experience, since
in January 1844, the German painter and naturalist Ferdinand Bellermann, on an excursion thereabouts, was held up by two robbers
who, to their anger and dismay found only pencils and an eraser
when they searched through his pockets – no money!
The Carabobo Trail is one of the icons and main attractions of
this National Park. An alternative has to be found quickly for consolidating this emblematic landscape as an historic, architectural and ar-
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cheological heritage, since apart from the scientific importance of the
surroundings, with their extraordinary flora and fauna, it must be
preserved for conducting scientific research that will unlock its secrets
and pleasures for this and future generations.
We would like to give special thanks to our invaluable traveling
companions and field workers, to the wardens of Inparques, Luis
Mendoza and Manuel Amaya, who with their experience, professionalism, spirit, good humor and friendliness made this undertaking possible; to Architect Lisselotte Salom, former Area Coordinator for Inparques, Carabobo State, and to Engineer Luis Barona, former Superintendent of San Esteban National Park, for sensing the importance of
our Project and giving their all to coordinate the Institution’s support;
to Architect Ullrich Baasch for providing maning sketches of the daily
life in the San Esteban of yesterday; to Dr. Francisco Delascio Chitty
for his review of the botanical data; to our editor Asdrúbal González,
for having contributed his own valuable historical information; and to
Hermann and Eckart Boede Wantzelius, for collaborating with the
procedures prior to our respective contacts with the editor. Last but
no least, I want to thank Henrik Blohm, Richard Römer, Guillermo
Valentiner and Editor Carsten Todtmann, without whose help this
book would not have been possible.
The Carabobo Trail, witness to the history
and natural sciences of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries
One of the colony’s first ports, Borburata, was founded in 1551,
and communicated with the interior of the country via a mule track
called the San Jean Trail, which ascended the Borburata River Valley
towards Mount El Novillo of the Coastal Mountain Range, then headed downwards towards Vigirima. In 1555 Nueva Valencia del Rey was
founded as a necessary replacement for the town of Borburata, which
was constantly being attacked by pirates and corsairs, just as the mule
trains that used this trail were assailed by wanted criminals. Infamous
English corsairs and pirates such as John Hawkins and Francis Drake
assaulted the town in May 1567 and April 1568, burning down houses
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and stealing the royal treasure as revenge against the Spanish governor for not agreeing to buy 200 slaves they had brought from Guinea
in Africa. They also dispatched a troop of pirates from their crew
along the mountain trail to take Nueva Valencia del Rey. Pirate assaults over the years were commonplace and in 1677 Valencia was
sacked and razed by French pirates.
The city of Puerto Cabello was founded much later, in 1730, since
it was safer and much easier for the berthing of vessels. It thus displaced the port of Borburata, becoming the country’s main port.
Around this same date, the Guipuzcoana Company began operations, landing support to the investment of private capital in the commercial activities of the colony. In 1761, the Council of Nueva Valencia del Rey decreed the construction of a road between this city and
Puerto Cabello, which was originally the Carabobo Trail, then known
as the Old Trail around the middle of the 19th Century and nowadays as the Spanish Trail. Its purpose was to directly connect with
the central regions, the plains (Llanos) and even the Andes. To the
north, from the coast, it was protected from Las Vigías Heights by the
Mirador (Look-Out Post) of Fort Solano, constructed between 1778
and 1799, currently known as El Vigía Mountain and Fort Solano.
This fortress, the largest of its kind among others scattered farther
below, protected both Puerto Cabello, the mouth of River San Esteban, the aqueduct and the start of the colonial trail to the Marín and
San Esteban Valleys, both vital for the port.
Along their northern slopes, the impressive heights of the Coastal
Mountain Range comprise, progressively, dry forests, rain forests and
cloud forests towards La Cumbre (the Summit), sheltering the bed of
San Esteban River. The southern slopes, with their heaths and the
ravines with gallery forests form the course of the Cabriales River
which flows through the city of Valencia.
The European naturalists who came to know the Old Trail were
impressed by the lengths to which the Spaniards must have gone to
forge this mountain road, spending huge amounts of money and overcoming immense obstacles along the way, since they had to blast the
overhanging rock that obstructed their planned route. It is not hard to
imagine the Spanish craftsmen and engineers opening a way through
the mountains and the dense forest, and the surveyors that had to
choose the best mountain passes and slopes; the great boulders that
were blown apart with gunpowder and used to build the road, the
bridges, pave the surfaces and shore up the sides and sharp curves,
and the all-important slaves who made this huge endeavor possible;
and then, the travelers and traders who came and went on foot, on
donkeys, on mules, on horseback, the soldiers and the wounded after
the battles who died along the wayside, all of these images appear like
silent witnesses to the road. Imagine, for example, on the evening of
June 24, 1821, the day of the Battle of Carabobo, the Spaniards, defeated, having to retreat and hurriedly take to the trail, carrying their
wounded to safety within Puerto Cabello; the combat and the skirmishes that were fought out under the command of the Republican
troops on the way up the Trail at Cumbre Chiquita; the Rifles Battalion
that set up the flanking line around Puerto Cabello and the meetings
held by Simón Bolívar with his generals at the house of General Bartolomé Salom in San Esteban. On July 12, 1822, the Bravos de Apure
Battalion, camped along the Carabobo Trail, substituted the Rifles in
their holding of the line. On August 11, 1822, royalist General Francisco Tomás Morales, coming down from the San Hilario Heights with
1,800 soldiers fought the Battle of Sabana de la Guardia at the foot of
Mount Bárbula against General José Antonio Páez with his 50 lancers,
50 militia and 300 cattlemen. This Battle is depicted in Pedro Castillo’s
mural which is on display in Casa Páez, Valencia, and is but one of the
pictures of the Carabobo Trail of the time. In the upper part of the
mural we can pick out La Cumbre and the cliff with the inn where
Ferdinand Bellermann spent many days and nights in January 1844,
and where the German naturalist Karl Ferdinand Appun also lived for
several years around the middle of the 19th Century. You can also see
the road zigzagging down the Bárbula descent, down to the foot of
the mountain. Bolívar and Páez planned the attack on the last bastion
of the Spaniards, the November 7, 1823 storming of Puerto Cabello
with care, Páez moving down the Trail with 400 foot soldiers and 100
lancers of the Anzoátegui Battalion to finish off a cruel war. (Page 42)
During post-Independence times the road was almost abandoned
and became known during the rest of the 19th Century as the Old
Trail, since the new one, the one that was widened in 1848 as the
Aguas Calientes Trail, coming from Puerto Cabello, passed through El
Palito to Las Trincheras and as far as Naguanagua, always along the
banks of the Aguas Calientes River. Nowadays this is the old Trincheras
to El Palito road. Alexander Von Humboldt made reference to this
path on February 27, 1800, on his way from Valencia to Puerto Cabello, when he came down the Aguas Calientes route towards the
Carabobo coast. But it was in the 19th Century when the Old Trail had
its moment of glory, as far as the visits and work of the great European naturalists and researchers in botany, zoology and anthropology
were concerned. Notwithstanding the current belief that Humboldt
was in San Esteban as he traveled along the Spanish Trail, this in fact
never happened, since because of his very tight schedule and need to
reach, if possible, the Orinoco River and Casiquiare stream during the
dry season, he was only able to travel down the Aguas Calientes
stretch and spend just one day in Puerto Cabello. However, he did
commission and help with the financing of the trip of Ferdinand
Bellermann, the German naturalist and painter, who traveled the
length of the San Esteban Valley and the Old Trail in 1842 and 1844,
recording the flora, fauna and typical landscapes in his beautiful
paintings. Von Humboldt also helped another of the important naturalists and painters, Karl Ferdinand Appun.
When news of the country’s bounties arrived overseas, the first
wave of Europeans began to arrive in Puerto Cabello, Glöckler, Rühs,
Blohm, Behrens, Kolster, Valentiner, Baasch, Römer, Ermen, Brandt,
Lührs, Kerdel, Koenecke, Latouche, Starke and Stürup among many
others (Page 12). The interesting thing here is that some of them would
exert considerable influence over the German naturalists that came
later to study the Old Trail, the mountains, the town’s surroundings and
the San Esteban Valley. Thanks to its bucolic geography and to the fact
that some of these immigrants built their homes, settled in the town,
and opened shops during the middle and end of the 19th century in the
Colonial urban district of Puerto Cabello, San Esteban became a beauti-
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ful residential area with gardens that lent a pleasant European tropical
nuance. Some of these century-old houses are still inhabited by direct
descendants of the German pioneers Hermann Eduard Baasch, who
arrived in Puerto Cabello in 1848, and Miguel Alejandro Römer, who
came from the Dutch island of Curacao in 1849 and kept close relations
with German circles. Their descendants have maintained the traditions
of their ancestors and currently own one of the oldest and still active
shipping companies, Eduardo Römer C.A., originally founded in 1848
as Baasch & Haeseler, and subsequently changed to Leseur, Römer &
Baasch in 1870, and to Baasch & Römer in 1895, the latter mainly a coffee, cocoa and cotton exporting company.
Arrival of the European Naturalists
The pencil drawing by Ferdinand Bellermann of September 9,
1842, titled “Capilla en San Esteban” (San Esteban Chapel), (Page 25)
and located in the Glöckler Residence, represents this époque. It depicts the corridor of the house, a chapel and the clearly emblematic
vegetation, the Old Trail down on the right and the Breasts of San
Hilario or Hilaria Peaks, known in San Esteban as “Burro sin Cabeza”
(The Headless Donkey). The same day he arrived in Puerto Cabello,
Bellermann met a German merchant named Glöckler, who asked him
to do a painting of his house in San Esteban and while working, the
artist submerged himself in the tropical landscape, carried away by its
beauty. After 166 years the house is still there and inhabited by Eduardo Römer’s descendants. Bellermann was a guest of Mr. Glöckler
for several weeks, during which time the artist became acquainted
with the San Esteban Valley and Puerto Cabello. From January 25 to
February 1, 1844, Bellermann traveled the Old Trail towards Valencia
which he later depicted in his famous paintings. (Page 16)
The European explorers Jean Jules Linden and Nicolaus Funk, the
former a young Swedish botanist and orchidologist, the latter a German naturalist, traveled the Old Trail from Valencia to Puerto Cabello
in 1842 while collecting orchids, classifying plants and drawing details of the landscape.
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German explorer Karl Moritz, (Page 13) along with Bellermann
and Funk, made excursions around San Esteban and its countryside in
1842 and stayed in the Römer Residence. Moritz lived and died as a
founding colonist in Colonia Tovar, a town populated by German immigrants and located in the Coastal Mountain Range of Aragua State.
When the German shipping merchant Karl Rühs, who lived in
Puerto Cabello, visited the German botanist and geologist Hermann
Karsten in Europe, the botanist was enthralled by the tales of the San
Esteban forest. Between 1848 and 1852, Karsten collected and classified new varieties of quinine trees in these mountains, an important
antidote for malaria.
Karl Ferdinand Appun, (Page 16) another German painter and botanist, was also the guest of one of the German families living in San
Esteban between 1849 and September of 1857, and lived most of this
time in the inn and general store at the top of the San Hilario Heights,
dividing his five-year stay in these mountains among other local stores
and inns along the road such as La Soledad and Los Canales, respectively. But he always preferred the summit of the San Hilario Heights,
so full of natural beauties and blessed with a soft and fresh climate, as
he used to say. It was Appun who described in detail in his publication
“Unter den Tropen” (Under the Tropics) the Old Trail and the forest, its
inhabitants, plants and wild animals. He was also a hunter and taxidermist who sent treated skins to European museums, ultimately the main
task given to him.
August Fendler, another German botanist, also traveled the Old
Trail between 1856 and 1858 and found the spectacular setting of La
Soledad, which house and location were described by Appun. He was
amazed by the stunning nature, and made important graphic paintings
of the place.
Anton Goering, (Page 16) German painter and ornithologist, came
from Europe to Puerto Cabello in 1867, with a stopover in the country’s
eastern region, and was hosted for long periods in 1869 by the shipping
merchant Luis Federico Blohm in his large two-story residence, and
from the lookout point of the Blohm Residence known as the La Torre
del Pintor Ornitólogo or La Torre Zoológica del Pintor (Page 15) he sent his
collections to England. He would talk emotionally of his deepest gratitude to Mrs. and Mr. Blohm and the warmest of welcomes they
would give him, as well as their interest in art and nature, all of which
was expressed in their sincere support for his work. The big old
house no longer exists, but the location still harbors the new offices
and parking lot of the Blohm Company. On the other hand, Goering
was in San Esteban for a few weeks and stayed at the Römer Residence owned by the shipping merchant Miguel Alejandro Römer, using it as his base for his hiking trips to the mountains where he drew
his beautiful paintings.
Special consideration should be given to the presence in San Esteban of the well-known European geographer Wilhelm Sievers at the
end of the 19th century. Sievers landed in La Guaira after the Hamburg
Geographical Society entrusted him with the task of carrying out a
geological survey of the Venezuelan Andes Mountain Range. Sievers
stayed in Venezuela twelve months, devoted a few days to Puerto
Cabello’s coastal region, and spent the Christmas of 1885 at the Baasch Residence in the idyllic San Esteban, as he referred to the San
Esteban Valley.
Henri Pittier, a distinguished Swiss botanist and father of one of
Venezuela’s first national parks which is named after him, came from
the United States to Venezuela for the first time in 1913 and carried
out extensive herborization in Puerto Cabello’s southern forest.
Finally, other famous biographers of more recent periods of the
20th century also visited San Esteban and its Colonial trail, including
Alfredo Jahn, Eduardo Röhl, Francisco Antonio Rízquez and Francisco Tamayo.
Journeys, tales and current state of the Carabobo Trail
Anselme Michel de Gisors, Sergeant Major of the regiment from
Guadalupe, came to Puerto Cabello at the height of the French Revolution in 1793, on board the La Ferme, the French King’s ship. The
ship was berthed in the port for a year, during which time Gisors carried out in-depth studies on the city, its forts, buildings, residents,
climate, flora and fauna, making his way along the Carabobo Trail
and the areas surrounding the San Esteban River. His of great merit
lay for in having described and published the first detailed observations of this region.
According to Gisors, the trail began in Puerto Cabello west-bound,
veered toward the south between Mount Las Vigías with its Mirador de
Solano and the San Esteban River, and entered the Marín Valley. These
lands were wooded hillsides, broad grazing lands, river meadows and
lakes in low areas. The real trail then entered the green and fresh San
Esteban Valley. Nowadays this first section of the trail no longer exists,
taken over by the Sorpresa-Muelles expressway and the townships of
Cueva del Lobo, El Fortín and the San Esteban housing development in
the turn toward the Marín Valley on one side of Mount El Vigía, respectively. Part of the San Esteban River in this section was channeled, reducing its mouth to a simple outlet for seuvage. On the contrary, the
surrounding areas still harbor a wooded area with royal palms Roystonea oleraceae, which are probably vestiges of the old river meadows
that used to flood when the river levels rose.
On March 1, 1800, when Humboldt was coming back from Puerto
Cabello to Bárbula, on his way to the Aguas Calientes trail, he was enthralled by the valleys and tall mountains of the Coastal Mountain Range
he could see to the south, writing in his traveling journal:
“…mountains covered with vegetation and topped with peaks make
up the backdrop of the scenery (he refers to the Hilaria Peak with its rugged crests, slopes and crags, the Hilario Breasts or Headless Donkey),
whose outline would lead one to think is trapene rock. Close to the coast
everything is exposed, white, powerfully illuminated, while the curtain of
mountains is covered with trees with thick foliage that envelop the dark
rocky lands with their vast shadows. When we turn away from Puerto
Cabello to the Valles de Aragua, we stop once again in the Bárbula Estate
through which the new Valencia trail is being routed.”
This is how he described the Carabobo Trail which he observed
from its southern slope at the foot of Mount Bárbula and which wound
up the hill. This trail was fairly new for its time; it had been built close
to 39 years ago and had been continually remodeled and enlarged to
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make it accessible to wheeled traffic. In fact, seven years later the
construction of the great lancet stone bridge Paso Hondo began over
the San Esteban River on its northern slope, and nine years later its
cobbled, paving and drainage was finished.
Gisor’s narratives at the end of the 18th century were interesting
because they described the traffic along the colonial trail, which were
poorly known:
“Mule caravans go to Puerto Cabello twice a year, bringing costly
merchandise and gold and silver ingots from Popayán, Santa Fe (in
Colombia’s Southern Andean region) and other places. Caravans may
comprise from 80 to 100 mules in a row, each carrying two small chests”
(merchandise to be loaded in Puerto Cabello, bound for Spain).
Livestock and working animals were also herded from the plains
and driven along this mountain trail to be loaded onto ships:
“Every year 3,000 horses, 9,000 mules and 8,000 oxen are exported from the Mainland to the West Indies”.
Arriero cargando los burros, Loading donkeys
Martín Tovar y Tovar, 1862.
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Humboldt reported that 10,000 mules were transported every year
along the Carabobo Trail to Puerto Cabello to be exported, as well as
cotton, grown on the Naguanagua and Bárbula Estates. Bellermann
and Appun also reported on the lesser trade still taking place along
the trail in the mid 19th century. Herds of work mules and donkeys
and oxen pulled wagons frequently traveled from the plains to the
coast using this trail. The large herds of cows, young bulls and sometimes grown bulls, shockingly thin from the long voyage from the
plains to the coast, were allowed to come down from Valencia only
twice a week on determined days due to the hazard they posed to
those traveling this narrow trail. These “cattle farmers”, as the landowners were called, were responsible for moving the cattle and traveled the narrow forest trail with help from their foremen, farm workers and working animals. Another key activity was performed by the
Postmen (“Los Correos”), who carried important dispatches from
Puerto Cabello to Valencia every day. Lastly, there were “Los Paleros”
(lit. the “Pole Men”), the name given to those who preferred to use the
Old Trail instead of the new one, the Trincheras trail because it was
shorter and more direct. Los Paleros were Indians and Mulattos from
towns close to Valencia and the shores of Lake Valencia who transported chickens, parrots, monkeys, rope made from the algave plant
Fourcroya humboldtiana and large baskets filled with pottery, clay
plates, eggs and white cheese sold in Puerto Cabello, all tied to the
long rods carried between two people.
Wild animals teemed. Gisor’s narratives tell of how the wild or
renegade cattle were tied up and forcefully tamed:
“…a man trained in this task throws a lasso from twenty paces
away with a sliding knot made with ox skin around the horns and
immediately ties the other end to a tree. The ox comes and goes and
finally hamstrings itself in such a way that it cannot move any more.
They let the oxen stay tied for at least six days without any food so as
to tame them. It is nevertheless necessary to keep an eye on them and
be ready for any emergency because tigers (jaguars, Panthera onca)
grab any opportunity to seize their prey. Lions (pumas, Puma concolor), do the most damage, leopards (ocelots, Leopardus pardalis),
and specially tigers, which do not think twice about attacking a caravan if they realize it is not well guarded… herds of deer (white tale
deer, Odocoileus virginianus, are common in the surrounding valleys and mountains), tapir, Tapirus terrestris, can always be hunted
in pairs, but they are hard to chase up the mountain. Herds of Cercopitecos monkeys (capuchin monkeys, Cebus olivaceus) and land
turtles abound (tortoise, Geochelone carbonaria, which people pick
up in great quantities when the brush catches fire). “Harpy eagles,
Harpia harpyja, who swoop down to hunt monkeys, sloths, Bradypus
variegates, young goats and agoutis, Dasyprocta leporina, and king
vultures, Sarcoramphus papa, fly with the black vultures, Coragyps
atratus, eating carrion.”
We now know, thanks to these tales, of the enormous numbers
of crocodiles that lived in the flood streams and lakes of the Esteban
River, as well as the coastal lagoons of Puerto Cabello. Gisors would
go on thus:
“In the sweet water lakes around Puerto Cabello there are crocodiles, (american crocodile Crocodylus acutus), of an enormous size.
They are usually between 12 and 20 ft. long (supposing these to be
English feet (30.48 cm) they must have been between 3.7 and 6.1 meters). Around the lakes where these amphibians live there is always a
strong smell of musk.”
Bellermann in this respect notes in his travel log for July 21, 1842:
“I set out at 6 in the morning intent on drawing a picture of the
beautiful view of the city (Puerto Cabello); it is in a way divided into
three parts and between them there are almost empty spaces without
constructions of any kind. When I reached the first of these intervening
spaces, I saw a crowd of people on the beach busy cutting the head off
an 8 ft. long (2.4 m) crocodile, that they’d hunted it in the streets of the
town at least that’s what they were saying.”
There were also sloths, howler monkeys Alouatta seniculus, armadillos Dasypus novemcinctus, pacas Agouti paca, aguatis and foxes
Cerdocyon thous, that were so common that you could see them all
along the royal road and populated areas of the valley, just as the German naturalists would later describe them.
On to the village of San Esteban
Bellermann’s impressions, recorded on January 25, 1844, as he
bid farewell to Puerto Cabello en route to Valencia along the summit
road, going into the San Esteban valley through the Marín valley, bear
witness to the surrounding beauty.
“I rode briskly out of the city, the countryside alight with the morning sun as the wonderful San Esteban valley stretched out before me,
crowned by the Valencia Mountains and Hilaria’s Breasts, my goal for
that day. The bucare trees (Erythrina spp.) were flowering in the valley,
their tops like red flames; it was all like a floral display, convolvulus
and vines shone white and blue in stark contrast.”
Appun, on the other hand, went from Puerto Cabello to the San
Esteban valley, not by the Carabobo Trail, but rather by skirting the
eastern side of the El Vigía Mountain, along the path known as the
Portachuelo pass. He made a short cut towards the west by the shores
of the San Esteban Mountain, and then came down into the Marín
valley. The Portachuelo trail originally went by the aqueduct and the
water tank, then between two cemeteries, the Catholic one on the
left, now destroyed and gone, and the Protestant one on the right,
now known as the German Cemetery, rebuilt, refurbished and boasting a statue of Humboldt at its entrance. This route was also used
originally to climb El Vigía Mountain to Fort Solano, and is now the
main road that leads to the town of San Esteban. In the writings of
Appun we read of the characteristics of the road at that time:
“From up here at El Portachuelo, there is a wonderful view of all
the houses of Puerto Cabello. The sea breeze can only enter the San
Esteban valley through this pass between the mountains. To the left the
trail now descends along a slope, while to the right, it drops down to
the plain, offering a beautiful view over the low brush away to the light
green-colored fields of sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) next to
Paso Real (the Carabobo Trail). Very soon one arrives on the plain
where the road winds along the foot of the mountains.”
Nowadays the national highway passes through the same opening
in the mountain and descends the same slope of the old trail, known
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as the Pitiguaos’ descent, passing the township of Valle Verde lower
down, then to the left past the ruins of an old sugar cane plant, which
was already collapsing as the time of Appun, then through the Valles
of San Esteban housing development, to follow the beautiful wooded
landscapes with a small mine hidden away, its lime oven to the left,
close to the mountain, until reaching the ruins of the once glorious San
Esteban Hacienda. Let us compare this with the texts of Appun:
“The road passes in front of the cocoa hacienda buildings and after
a brief tour, the valley of San Esteban opens with all its charm before the
eyes of the traveler. Beautifully shaped mountains rise on each sides,
among which the most impressive are the high walls of rock shaped into
the Headless Donkey which gleam in the distance, and the cerrated
peaks of the San Hilario Heights. The San Esteban River is born in these
mountains and it twists and turns all the way along the valley.”
Coming now into the village, on the right we find La Casona, as
it is popularly called, constructed in 1882, Villa Vincencio, reconstructed and now transformed into the Ecomuseum of San Esteban,
then the houses of the European immigrants. Here follow the accounts of Appun:
“…the country homes of the foreigners who live in Puerto Cabello.
Amid the exuberant and gigantic vegetation with its great shiny
leaves, appear the mud huts of the indigenous people with their palm
thatch roofs.”
The construction of this section of the present national highway
and of the old Carabobo Trail from Puerto Cabello to the town of San
Esteban, was opened to tenders in 1857, modernizing it as a wheeled
vehicle route, paved partly with coconut shells Cocos nucifera. The
trip by horse, mule or quitrín, a horse-drawn cart (Page 43), took about
two hours. On entering the town, the national highway is now called
Royal Street and passes through the whole length of the Colonial part
of the town.
Among other old houses of the European immigrants we also
find on the right Villa Friedenau known since 1885 as Casa Brandt,
when Federico Brandt acquired it from Chacho Capriles, formerly belonging to Oscar Baasch. At the next curve on the left, we find the
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house of Miguel Alejandro Römer, Casa Römer, owned by the family
and still occupied by them since 1865. There are notary records of the
house dating back to 1833. In the gardens of the house there are the
ruins of an old general store dating back to the times of the colonial
road. Anton Goering stayed here for a few weeks:
“Once again I had the chance to experience the wonderful surroundings of San Esteban and at the same time enjoy the most generous help and hospitality and the view of family life in the house of Herr
Römer, to whom I owe my most sincere thanks, and also to Mr Leseur
and Mr Ermen. I would also like to thank Messrs. Gruner, Schieremberg, Reute, Becker, Baasch, Röhl, Valentiner, Gathmann, Bräuer,
Lüdert, Nagel and other countrymen.”
Herr Römer’s daughters also had their comments to make about
their guest:
“…Herr Goering’s visit with his vast experience and amusing stories was very entertaining; he collected plants and animals, dead and
alive, among the latter a tortoise and several frogs (Bufo sp.), and he
arranged some planks of wood to stop them escaping from his room.”
Goering himself would describe his stay as follows:
“…as I remember having observed in the town of San Esteban,
just one hour away from Puerto Cabello Bay, where the roaring of
those monkeys (howlers) hidden high up in the nearby mountains,
often joined their shrieks with the songs of a far off homeland played
on the pianos in those peaceful country houses. The drawn-out roars
of the howler monkeys sound terrifying at dusk, like the distant thunder of a storm; nature was sending me a message that it could feel a
storm coming.”
Next among the neighboring houses is Casa Baasch owned, since
1872, by Hermann Eduard Baasch and subsequently by his son Oscar,
who still resides there with his descendents, the Hugo-Baasch brothers. It is interesting and important to note the presence of an ancient
medlar tree (níspero Manilkara zapota), which is referred to ever since
the beginning of the 19th Century in old documents of the house, including its measurements. Its trunk is an impressive 5.10 m in circumference and 1.62 m in diameter, still standing strong and bearing fruit
as sweet as honey, very popular by the birds of the area (Page 52). The
exact date of the house’s construction is not known, but a good reference is an 1838 coin found on the land (Page 22). It is reported that it
was sold in a ruinous state to the Molina-Permañer family in 1845,
rebuilt it and later sold it to the Baasch. It was in this house that the
geographer Wilhelm Sievers spent an unforgettable Christmas in 1885.
Next door is the second Casa Römer, acquired by the family in 1913,
where the descendents of Eduardo and Constanza Römer, who spent
most of the 20th Century there, still live. From 1876 on it was known
as Casa Sievers, prior to which, in 1841, it was called Casa Glöckler,
and the oldest reference is to 1832 when it belonged to Eugenia González. It was drawn by Bellermann on September 9, 1842, entitled
“Chapel at San Esteban” (Page 25), and it is important to emphasize that
he attributed much relevance to the reproduction of characteristic traits
of the vegetation and the countryside. This painting was an example
of this. Behind the house can be seen a group of trees, casually distributed and representative of the local flora. There are, according to
botanist Hermann Karsten: coconut Cocos nucifera, mamme-apple
(mamey), Mammea americana, avocado Persea americana and pomegranate Punica granatum, while the vegetation characterizes the area’s
climate, the geographical site is determined in the distance by the silhouette of the Headless Donkey. Bellermann also noted down his
anecdotes in Mr. Glöckler´s house:
“There were four ladies in the house, Madame Rühs, Madame Glöckler and the two daughters of the Lady of the house, Miss Lutschy and Johanna Todt. Mr. Glöckler and Mr. Rühs returned at nightfall, slept outdoors and rode on the next day to Puerto Cabello, two hours away.”
Bellermann’s diary also tells of the uproar caused around the village by the appearance of a lion or puma accompanied by its cub,
which stole chickens, scaring everyone by going into people’s houses
while they were sleeping. Another time he noted, while painting a coffee plantation, the noise caused by a large black snake that made all the
dry leaves rustle as it hunted small birds. His stories would continue:
“Another interesting species of the animal kingdom is the wild dog.
They roam around here, living by hunting and frequently tricking the
hunters” (he was probably referring to the bush dog or bush badger
Speothos venaticus, now the rarest wild canine in the country and at
the same time the most difficult to observe. Within the Coastal Mountain Range it has been seen only in the San Esteban National Park).
Not much has changed in these old mansions of the Römer and
Baasch families since those days an in the gardens and land abutting
the mountains the birdlife and wild animals still abound. This is especially so in the morning and early evening, as they move back and
forth from their roosts: a pair of yellow-headed parrots Amazona
ochrocephala, orange-winged parrots A. amazonica, chestnut-fronted
macaw Ara severa and the green-rumped parrotlets Forpus passerinus, chattering away in the trees, and, flying high above back to the
mountains, the flocks of blue-headed pionus Pionus menstruus. At
the foot of the mountain, in a dead tree trunk, a pair of crimsoncrested woodpeckers Campephilus melanoleucos open out a hole for
their future nest with a continuous drumming. There are nights when
you can hear the whistling ducks Dendrocygna autumnalis flying
high above the valley, which at times even have their chicks in the
holes of the royal palms. Several different species come to gorge on
the fruit of the ancient medlar tree, the more colorful among them
being the brilliant silver-beaked tanager Ramphocelus carbo, troupial
Icterus icterus and the crafty crested oropendola Psarocolius decumanus, with their acrobatic contortions and audible ringing cries.
Sometimes snakes like the coral Micrurus isozonus or more often a
lance-head mapanare - Bothrops spp. hide under a piece of pottery or
an earthenware jug, or maybe a yellow-tailed cribo Drymarchon
corais corais, a tigra Spilotes pullatus slithering quickly away up towards the mountain or maybe a boa constrictor. They are bolder in
the summer, in the dry season, when they come down from the
nearby woods on the lookout for mangos Mangifera indica and water; an unsociable red brocket deer Mazama americana or perhaps a
white tailed deer, even a small group of capuchin monkeys is to be
seen, a spectacled caiman Caiman crocodilus from a nearby river
hides in the pond of an abandoned allotment. Bellermann had already referred to the caimans in the San Esteban River, once when he
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was on a river excursion and saw what he called small 2-foot (60
cms.) gators, and Appun, when bathing in its refreshing waters, saw
how these “gators” approached him without causing him any harm at
all. The roars that so impressed Appun and Goering of the howler
monkeys are still to be heard up in the mountains, and in the dead
scythed brush on the land around the houses, the scandalous squawking of the (rufous-vented chachalaca - Ortalis ruficauda) gives a regular wake-up call. Then, of course, patrolling the chicken hutches at
night, up to no good, is the occasional possum Didelphys marsupiales, fox, ocelot and jaguarundi Herpailurus yagouaroundi.
As we continue down Calle Real, we cross a small bridge over the
Contreras Stream. On our left are the rebuilt ruins of Casa Salom, which
used to belong to General Bartolomé Salom, now turned into the Salom
Museum where Simón Bolívar once stayed in November 1823. The
house was given to General Salom in return for his military services
and back pay due to him. Another one of the old German mansions
completely abandoned and in ruins, that did not, unfortunately stand
the test of time and where Appun probably once stayed, was Casa Ermen, which came to be known as Casa Vollbracht later on in the 20th
Century. It was also on the left side of Calle Real but closer to the village, further down, after Casa Salom, but why don’t we let our fantasies
fly by listening to naturalist Appun’s own description:
“Filled with the deepest personal satisfaction upon contemplating
the wonderful scenery, I stayed in the country home lent to me so
kindly for the length of my stay in this paradise by one of the most important traders of Puerto Cabello. Everything there was interesting and
new: the image of the impressive mountains, the graceful vegetation,
the strange animal world and the dark-skinned people with their characteristic gestures and weird language. When I went into the dining
room, shortly before dawn, and looked outside, the first thing I saw
was that colossal mountain range looming in the distance. The fauna
awakes! Strident cackling of wild turkeys emerges from the dense undergrowth; flocks of green parrots fly chattering off their nests; a drumlike roaring of the howler monkeys warns of approaching rain and
distant rasping cries of black curassows (Crax alector) descend from
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the mountains” (he was actually referring to the yellow-knobbed
curassow Crax daubentoni).
You carry on ahead, passing in front of the Catholic Church, rebuilt from its own ruins in 1801, surrounded by small multi-colored
houses with the typical fronts of the Guzmán Blanco era. Some of
them still have their same poinciana hedges Caesalpinia pulcherrima,
a smallish shrub with lots of branches of bright red, orange or yellow
blooms that give them a Caribbean feel. Vehicle traffic on Calle Real
ends at a roundabout and from then on you have to proceed on foot
over the old surface of the Spanish trail. The cobbles and containing
walls of olden days can be seen again as you come across a rock with
petroglyphs, the Indians’ Stone (Page 24), sketched and precisely documented in the tales of naturalists Karsten and Appun. Bellermann
also visited these Indian hieroglyphs embedded in the wall of rock
with Mr. Rühs, describing them as lunar phases, crosses, boats, faces
and other designs crudely carved into the Stone. The Arahuacos (family of the Caquetíos tribe) lived approximately between the years 200
and 1600 of our era, around Lake Valencia and along the central Venezuelan coast, specifically in the valleys of the Rivers Borburata, San
Esteban and Goaigoaza and in the Caribbean Antilles. They were
forever hunted, attacked and enslaved by the Carib Indians and later
by the Spanish conquistadors, until finally they had to move away
westwards. They carved the rock with quartz, rubbing and chipping
away, giving form to their characteristic ideographic writing known as
petroglyphs. The final traces of the Arahuacos in the San Esteban valley, around the middle of the 19th Century, were also reported by Appun, when the owners of the last general stores remaining along the
Colonial trail were by descendants of the Arahuacos, by then mixed
with the bloodlines of the African slaves.
From the Indians’ Stone onward, according to Appun, the Old
Trail began, as he explained:
“My walk through the village took me southwards towards the high
mountains; the road winds along between the attractive country houses, some of them perched on small hills; this is the beginning of the “Old
Trail”, built by the Spaniards, which leads from Puerto Cabello to New
Valencia across the tall mountains through the pass at the San Hilario
Summit, and just as with all the other great constructions made by the
Spanish, they barely remain intact. My walk takes me, a quarter of an
hour later, to the Indians’ Stone.”
The petroglyphs, well maintained and cared for by the community of San Esteban, are now within the perimeter of the village and
close to the first dam or water source for Puerto Cabello, built halfway
through the 20th Century but already in disuse. In fact, the old cement
aqueduct, known in San Esteban as El Arrasante (the Sweeper) follows the mountain slope at the side of the road all along this particular stretch of the trail. So on you go along the old cobbled way, the
river always to your right down below, later joining the dirt road that
also follows the original route as far as the Campanero Rangers’ Post
at the entrance to the San Esteban National Park. These days the road
is called the Spanish Trail and it starts here. The Municipal Aqueduct
is also here on this land, where it picks up water from the San Esteban
River from another dam, built at the end of the 20th Century.
The Bucaral and Campanero Haciendas
We leave the Spanish Trail for a moment to cross the river along
one side of the dam and towards the other shore on the western side
and take the old road through the coffee and cocoa plantations Bucaral and Campanero, where both Appun and Goering were amazed
by the superb landscape, the farm buildings and by a curious bird.
Hereabouts you can hear the typical song of the bearded bellbird
Procnias averano, (Page 26) a small and very secretive bird, native to
these mountains. It gives its name campanero to this hacienda and its
powerful song is like a bell or, as the naturalists used to say, like a
blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil. Goering and Appun had this to say
about their visits to these haciendas:
“After an hour you come to the last homestead of San Esteban,
called Campanero, which is right on the road; behind, in the distance,
flows the San Esteban River. The River runs between two of the hacienda’s houses. Campanero is in a beautiful spot, amid high mountains
from which the river flows swiftly between tall boulders that fill its bed.
The Campanero coffee hacienda is half a league (about 2 km) from
the buildings and has more or less 30,000 coffee plants. If well looked
after, a coffee hacienda is a beautiful sight indeed.”
This road to Bucaral and Campanero heads south within the mountains; it was a three meter wide track for carts and was used exclusively by the haciendas, and is now a simple narrow path. Halfway
along, there are the remains of the old house of the hacienda that so
impressed the naturalists, but it is now in ruins and all that remains are
its stone foundations and scattered pieces of tile and brick. Shortly afterwards we reach a hut that is still inhabited, Las Quíguas, the only
remaining construction of the old hacienda, with its rudimentary production system (Page 26). Around it can be seen the old yards that are
used to dry the coffee and the cocoa and to the right, 50 m from the
road, are the scattered remains of the old watermill with its race and
respective tanks. The powerful singing of the bell birds continues to
impress the traveler and keep him company. In these woods there are
still coffee bushes Coffea sp., cocoa Theobroma sp. and native tangerines Citrus reticulata. We searched unsuccessfully for the old sarrapia
trees Dipteryx punctata, which, according to Brother Jesús Hoyos, distinguished botanist of the La Salle Natural Sciences Society, were
brought by Appun from his expedition through Bolivar State and planted in this hacienda. This tree comes from Guayana and the Amazon
regions of southern Venezuela and northern Brazil; it is a very valuable
export, since the extract from its seeds, cumarine, was and is still used
to perfume rape, tobacco leaves Nicotiana tabacum for snuff and cigarettes, soaps, perfumes, cosmetics, liquor and bakery products.
The start of the Carabobo Trail
We returned to the Park Rangers’ Post to set off again up the
royal road, quite flat at the beginning, the river always down to our
right and the slopes of the Headless Donkey to the southwest. At this
point it is wide and easy to walk along, but as one starts to climb it
becomes a narrow track that has been cut out of the rock, looking for
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its cobbles and curbs one can see that originally it was 3.5 m. wide.
You pass several creeks and can observe the earth movement and
containing walls of the little bridges, which were then constructed
with wooden logs placed over pillars and the edges of the river bed
and the open spaces filled with compressed straw and mud. There
must have been a total of six, without counting the large arched
humpback bridge at Paso Hondo. At one of the first creeks leading
down to the river you reach an old ford across the river with its pond
called El Paují, depicted by Goering in his painting “A ford in the San
Esteban River, Puerto Cabello” (Page 29). On the sides of the road you
can occasionally spot a strange tree called the rose of the jungle
Brownea grandiceps, about four meters tall with a thin trunk and lots
of branches, long hanging leaves which look very pale when they are
young but later take on a dark green color, their most curious aspect
being their spectacular 10 cm-diameter flower-balls, which spring directly from the trunk or from the thicker branches. The road continues upward, narrow and winding, just as was observed and described
by Goering in his letter “Anton Goering’s Excursion from Puerto Cabello to Lake Valencia”, translated and published in 1934 by Eduardo
Röhl in a bulletin of the Venezuelan Natural Sciences Society:
“The road is no easier to transit on horseback, the climb begins slowly here and there, the road gets narrower as it goes over a hill, presses
close to the vertical cliff and way below the foaming river rushes.”
Some minutes later you reach Chiquita Heights off to your right,
now covered over by the jungle, but where there used to be a hut and
one of the main general stores and inns of the époque, at about 200
m above sea level. This place was also described by Appun:
“Then you arrive by an endless series of twists and turns, steeper
and steeper, at a pleasant village called Chiquita Heights, where an
open square surrounded by banana trees (Musa spp.) and papayas
(Carica papaya), and the charred beams of an old hut with collapsed
walls are signs that there was once a human dwelling there.”
Here we unearthed a fragment of a multi-colored 19th Century
European plate, which strangely had the same characteristics and design as those found at the other old store El Guayabo, as we will see
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later, further up the mountain. There was a skirmish here, the Chiquita Heights Battle (Page 27), during the War of Independence, when
the royalists defeated the patriots. One hour has elapsed since we left
the Campanero Park Rangers’ Post.
The Paso Hondo Bridge, La Soledad and El Guayabo general store
Now we are walking up a quite steep and windy slope with many
cobbled stretches, to then continue for about an hour on a more even
keel. The road surface is quite well preserved hereabouts, built into
the side of the cliff, about 3.5 m. wide on average, with lots of containing walls of up to two meters in height. Then you arrive at Paso
Hondo, with its Paso Hondo Bridge or Spanish Bridge or Ogive Bridge,
at 390 m. above sea level, described thus by Appun:
“…further below, on the right side of the road, built on enormous
pillars, there is a tall strongly-constructed stone bridge. It dates back to
the days of the Spaniards who built it and which, just like everything
else on the mountain trail, has been abandoned to its fate.”
It can still be seen to this day, below the trail on the right-hand
side and covered with undergrowth. If, on the other hand, you continue straight ahead along the narrow path, you reach a small brook
by the side of the mountain where there were the ruins, according to
Appun, of another shack and store which were originally the hamlet
of Paso Hondo, and where the only visible remains are two stone lime
ovens. It was here where, around the beginning of the 19th Century,
the workers who were commissioned to build the great bridge were
lodged. The ovens were used to heat, dry and preserve the lime which
was an essential element for preparing the mortar or amalgam that
made up the conglomerate of lime, water and sand needed to set the
bricks and stones of the construction. This pass and the river crossing
between the sides of the mountain where they decided to construct
the bridge on that ideal spot, has always been known as Paso Hondo.
The bridge was built between the years 1807 and 1808 but could
never be completely finished because Spain would not guarantee the
financing for the enterprise, mainly because of the French Revolution
and the beginning of the War of Independence in Venezuela. Today,
standing on the parapet of the bridge, we can appreciate the difference
in height, and in the middle a brick wall which is none other than the
vertical line of the bullet-shaped arch which stands out on top by almost two meters. This means that the road surface had still to be
filled in. All the bricks for the bridge were hauled up on the backs of
mules from the city of Valencia. The first structure to be built over the
narrow bed of the river, resting on twin granite rocks, was its Gothic
arch or ogive. A carpenter would have prepared the mold with planks
that were then filled in with the mortar mix. Then from opposite sides,
the columns were built using earth and rock inclines, reinforced outside with containing walls of brick and stone. The bridge is forty meters long and seven wide, and the height of the ogive above the river
is approximately fourteen meters. Appun related that there was a rudimentary and poorly-built bridge above Paso Hondo, with a stone base
and made of wooden beams, mistakenly believing that the trail had
been diverted over this small bridge, but we now know that this was
originally the sixth and last bridge on the Carabobo Trail. The problem
with this bridge was that every time the river flooded during the rainy
season, its beams were washed away with the current and it was semidestroyed, making it impossible to pass. This is why the magnificent
ogive bridge was subsequently constructed. Scant remains of one of
the pillars of the little makeshift bridge are still to be seen 150m up the
road from Paso Hondo.
The trail leaves the river here, along a sharp uphill curve to the
southwest, quite wide and still bearing traces of its original cobbled
surface. Forty minutes later, now at 500 meters above sea level, you
reach a well-defined plain, reforested mainly with palm trees that do
not leave much room to see the extraordinary panoramas described
by the naturalists. This place, now known as El Palmar, was then
called La Soledad, described by Appun as a one-house hamlet, and it
was his home and base camp for a long time; he studied there, painted and collected and stuffed his wildlife samples. Stone foundations
of the hut still remain. We looked around and found some shards of
pottery, huge nails and iron hooks, charred wood, bits of knives, ma-
chetes or sabers, a one-cent coin dated 1843, all of them witness to
the fact that the place was inhabited years ago (Page 28). Appun also
told of his hike along the trail from Paso Hondo to La Soledad:
“…the trail gets steeper and steeper; the enormous mountainous
masses arise around you more and more daringly towards the heavens. The wide road is so steep that it was paved in long stretches so that
heavy rains would not completely destroy it. Thick jungle lines the trail.
Then you come upon a more open area, quite flat, where there are
some half-burned beams of an old house. The place is called “La Soledad” and offers a spectacular view of the rocky heights of the surrounding mountains.”
This part of the trail is so beautiful that Goering also enthusiastically described it:
“From here on the climb gets steeper and the undergrowth is more
and more exuberant as we get closer to the Summit. We find an
Ylang-Ylang or Milk Tree and when my guide slashes it with his machete a gusher of milk flows out, enough to quickly half-fill an empty
wine bottle” (popular known as milk from the cow tree Brosimun
utile this is in fact its white-colored sap, quite drinkable, rich in water, albumin, vegetable wax, calcium salts, magnesium, phosphates,
gum and sugar).
The considerable distance between this spot and the river allows a silence to reign over the mountain, broken by the roaring of
a family of howler monkeys a roadside hawk Buteo magnirostris
flying low through the trees. In this stretch we saw another lancehead (mapanare - Bothrops venezuelensis), dozing on a rock and a
smaller one shedding its skin, draped over a bush; and heard the
speedy and noisy fleeing of a yellow-tailed hunter and a parrot
snake Coluber carinatus. We spotted some low-flying smaller birds,
flocks of scarlet-fronted parakeets Aratinga wagleri flying very noisily, angrily almost, above the treetops, a swooping white-tipped
dove Leptotila verreauxi escaping into the distance and a rufousnecked wood rail Aramides axillaris crossing the trail just ahead of
us. We also saw the holes in the roadside cliffs where an armadillo
had been scrabbling at dawn in search of the larvae of different
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types of beetles. Goering had this to say about the animals he spied
on this section of the trail:
“The animal life does not seem to be in accordance with the rich
vegetation, since it gradually abandons the traveler. One would walk
for considerable distances without spotting a single bird, just from
time to time hearing the sharp call of the grey tinamou or mountain
hen (blue hen, Tinamus tao), or the whisper of the flight of some
small bird. We killed several snakes…Which was somehow strange
after one has visited the museums in Europe, where an infinite number of animals are on display. On the other hand, in different circumstances, if one was in a stream at first light, a wide variety of
fauna would appear, or, for instance, when dark clouds shrouded
the forest and lightning struck and thunder roared, then you could
hear the sinister growling of the howler monkeys and other animals,
harbingers of the approaching storm.”
Appun, however, who lived here in La Soledad for a longer time,
tells of his encounters with larger animals:
“…just as before, I continued to spend my nights at La Soledad. As
well as my firearms, I took my guide’s dog, big, black and fearsome, as
protection against possible visits from jaguars or pumas, which I attempted to scare off with a big fire that I would light at the entrance to
the hut. From the dense amates (higuerote - Ficus spp.) and Spanish
cedar (Cedrela odorata) would rise the loud cries of the red-ruffed fruit
crow (Pyroderus scutatus), a black bird with a red breast which can
only be spotted by the experienced eye amongst the thick foliage, and not
too far away, perched with an aloof air on the long dry branches of a
golden trumpet tree (araguaney - Tabebuia chrysantha) is the black and
grey-winged harpy, the fiercest beast among all the South American
eagles” (the harpy eagle (Page 30), whose body measures almost one
meter in height, is one of the biggest raptors in the world, but has now
almost disappeared from this mountain range).
From here on the trail becomes steeper still and more difficult.
The great sandy walls and rocks through which the royal road
wound can still be seen. On the right-hand side, every so often, you
can observe cuttings in the slopes which were the old drainage
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channels of the road’s surface, which at this point in time are occasionally up to two meters above the level of the trail, showing
how erosion has worn down the trail. With difficulty one stumbles
over cliffs, landslides and huge fallen trees, all heavily eroded and
washed away by the rain. At this stage the original trail, between
550 m and 800 m above sea level, is all but destroyed and lost. At
times one has to open up a path with a machete, trying to keep
one’s bearings. In the white sandy soil of a recent landslide we see
the prints of a tapir, a corpulent animal that has wisely steered clear
of human beings with its very shy, nocturnal habits, always hiding
in the dense forest undergrowth, keeping to the high ground. The
Coastal Mountain Range is one of the last refuges of the tapir. A
flock of small groove billed toucanet Aulacorhynchus sulcatus flies
by, and a family of wood-quail Odontophorus columbianus, crouching and hidden silently in a depression on the edge of the cliff, flies
hurriedly away at the very last moment as one gets close to them.
Since the mossy surface was quite thick at this height, covered with
decomposing leaves and trunks, we spotted the tracks left over a
longish distance by a group of wild hogs or collared peccary Tayassu tajacu, which leave the soil upturned as they scavenge for seeds,
roots and larvae, and once again the holes and soil uprooted by
armadillos. Below the great pivijays Ficus pallida lay strewn theyr
fig-like roundish fruit, bitten into or half-eaten by squirrels Sciurus
spp., monkeys or peccaries. We also pass close to the highest trees
in the forest, the giant “cucharón” or “niño “Gyranthera caribensis,
with its immense wall-like vertical roots from which the country
folk cut out chunks to make their bowls and utensils. After three
more hours of hard climbing we reach a small esplanade at 900 m
above sea level which was clearly used as a resting spot for the travelers of yore. At this height tree ferns Cyathea spp. abound and the
imposingly tall and strange araque palm Dictyocaryum fuscum,
standing atop its roots as if they were immense stilts. From here on
the trail is in a better state, still inclined, but not so steep. Forty-five
minutes later there is the only S-shaped curve; our altimeter shows
1,100 m and it was probably right here where Goering painted his
watercolor entitled “Puerto Cabello Mountains, the Caribbean in the
distance”, (Page 33) which is unquestionably one of the most picturesque depictions of the Old Trail. The painting shows how clear of
trees and clean the trail used to be, with its splendid view over the
Campanero hacienda, the San Esteban valley and out in the distance
Mount El Vigía with Fort Solano, the sea and some ships anchored
at Puerto Cabello.
This view is no longer to be enjoyed, since the forest and its
greenery have reclaimed their territory. However, if you go up to the
very edge of the abyss, you can just make out the sight that inspired
Goering. The road continues upwards for fifteen minutes more and
in spite of the effort, which makes you sweat, it’s fresh and very
humid. There are parts where its original structure has held up quite
well, the side walls, the curbs, the cobbles and the drainage channels; the surface is fairly wide, 4.5 m. Ten minutes later and you
reach a wide open space on the left of the road with the remains of
the stone walls that were the foundations of the buildings of an inn
and one of the main stores to be found along the road, we’ve reached
El Guayabo stopover. Appun described it in detail thus:
“After a long and difficult uphill climb you arrive again at a small
resting place called “El Guayabo”. A small copse of guaba trees (Psidium guajava), orange tree with dark foliage (Citrus sp.) and balsa
(Ochroma pyramidale), famous for its rapid growth, its huge round
leaves and long pods full of a short wool (hairs that protect the seeds)
are signs that there used to be a human settlement here.”
There are no more fruit trees, since the forest has taken over
everything again, filtering the entry of sunlight. Again we found
samples of what had once, long ago, been a dwelling. We recovered
fragments of clay pots, a glass bottle, china plates and cups made in
Europe in the 19th Century, a large door hinge, charred wood, a
hook and an iron key, a knife, a spear or saber point, two lead musket bullets, a necklace medallion and even a crown-embossed button, probably from a Spanish military uniform (Page 31). It is interesting that the fragments of multi-colored 19th Century ceramic pottery
found here are the same as those unearthed by the store at Chiquita
Heights, lower down. Could it be that the Spaniards used the same
sets of china at the different stores and inns along the way?
On January 25, 1844, Bellermann wrote in his diary as follows:
“After a ride of three leagues I had breakfast in a general store and
then continued quickly on my way…; the trail was very steep but well
cared for. I was now in a region of palms and tree ferns, surrounded
by the tropical jungle in all its splendor. I saw giant ferns forty feet high,
as colossal as those at Cocollar.”
Helmeted curassow, puma and tiger
Ten minutes later and you arrive at a section where about sixty
meters of the road has totally collapsed, brought about by a small
stream that crosses the road that has worn it away over time. Immense fallen trunks of trees brought down by storms obstruct the
sides; this spot is known as The Canals (Page 32), at 1,200m above sea
level, another of the places identified by Appun:
“…grey-white mists are dragged through the ravines and the road,
covering the mountains from sight with their sinister veils; the trees
drip incessantly and the traveler is conscious that the temperature up
here is quite cool. Several streams open out onto the road, crossing it
with their torrents of freezing water; high above, on both sides of the
trail there are sharply vertical green corroded walls that threaten to
collapse at any moment. Further on we found yet again a clearing still
covered with guavas, rose apples (Syzygium jambos), bananas and
breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) which bear witness to inhabitants from
the past. In the forest, perched on a hill, is a half-ruined cottage, surrounded by iriartesas and cecropias (yagrumos, Cecropia palmatisecta) with their silver leaves and slender ferns, this is The Canals,
years back my first home in these mountains.”
The new jungle growth does not let one see or appreciate the last
of the places he describes. The name of The Canals came about because
water was taken fron streams by lengths of palm split lengthwise to
make channels for filling the earthenware water jars or maybe even to
take the water down by gravity to the El Guayabo general store.
97
On this idyllic spot we pitched our camp, ready for the next few
days’ work. At dusk, as we were resting after the tiring trek, drinking a
revitalizing coffee, two golden quetzals Pharomachrus fulgidus with
their brilliant red and green colors started fighting over a female, while
band-tailed guans Penélope argyrotis, strutted from branch to branch
pecking at shoots of fresh leaves, and far off the roaring of the howler
monkeys could be heard. At night fireflies abounded with their flashing
lights, trying to get close to our campfire with their clumsy flight, probably thinking it was the light of another firefly. We could also hear the
barking of a nearby owl Ciccaba spp. Even though we slept in nylon
hammocks, fully dressed, socks included, our jackets on and wrapped
up in our sleeping bags, it was difficult to sleep with the cold freezing
you to the marrow, the temperature way down at 10° C. On the other
hand, the little waterfalls of the nearby stream and the drops of early
dew on the leaves and on the plastic sheeting we used to cover our
hammocks sent us to a very well deserved sleep. We were not the only
ones to suffer from the freezing cold night, Appun himself, in an effort
to ward off the cold, took to wearing typical mountain pajamas:
“…I stuck my head through the hole in the middle of the blanket I
used to cover myself that night; it hung from me in long picturesque
folds…Because I slept with my shirt on, my pants and a piece of cloth
wrapped round my head; this was the typical garb up there in the
mountains – and it worked very well.”
A helmeted curassow Pauxi pauxi (Page 34) up in the treetops
woke us up with its nervous and strident cackling, obviously disconcerted by our hammocks and all the other camping accoutrement.
Farther away, on the other hand, at home in its habitual privacy of the
mountains, we could hear the same bird singing away by day with a
deep and persistent panting uum- uum. Yet again we heard the yowls
and snorting of a group of howler monkeys staking out their territory.
The helmeted curassow, once plentiful in these mountains, is now
deemed a species verging on extinction because it has been and is
still hunted persistently. Its considerable heft and the characteristic
protuberance on its forehead, starting from its iron grey beak, which
is its sounding box, allows it to cast its deep groans so far away. Re-
98
cords from the past are witness to its abundance and common presence. For example, in these mountains we are describing, Appun
explained in profound detail a hunt for these curassows among the
Hilaria foothills and promontories. He, his guide Manuel and his dog
crawled through the thick undergrowth of the mountainside, following the sounds of a group of curassows:
“…the ever-closer groaning took us quickly to where the first prey
was to be found. Among the thick foliage of some trees there was seated
a group of eight of these black fowl. They are not much smaller than
turkeys and in spite of the clever hide-out they had chosen, their white
breasts gave them away. Flying heavily on cumbersome flights from
one branch to another in search of tree fruits, they still had not sensed
our presence. Each of us chose our target with care and two shots rang
out simultaneously in the forest. Two of the biggest birds fell immediately from on high. The survivors, uttering short cries of alarm, flapped
off through the undergrowth.”
Goering was also impressed by the beauty of the site and the
abundance of birds:
“…we reached a very special place called The Canals. The vegetation here is superb and looks as if it has been arranged by an artist.
Among the thousands, literally thousands, of plants there is a stream of
crystalline freezing cold water that runs along a considerable stretch
of the road. This half-lit part of the mountain was very attractive because of the infinite number of colorful birds.”
From then on the trail is not so steep and in the moist soil we
spotted the tracks of a big cat, one of those that still roam around
these mountains, a puma or mountain lion. Goering also told of his
experiences in this area with big cats:
“While I was busy collecting some insect samples, my guide had
moved away some 50 feet and I suddenly noticed that he crouched
down and signaled to me. I ran over to where he was with his boy and
he whispered “tiger” to me, and on the road I clearly saw the fresh
prints of its paws and looked out towards where the Indian was looking. A jaguar, known hereabouts as a tiger, must have crossed the road
ahead of him, because he had heard the noise in the brush and the
fresh prints of course confirmed it. The jaguar, like other classes of felines, is quite common in the mountains of the Coastal Range and in
the forests inland… the puma, the Venezuelans’ “lion” is to be found
around the houses of San Esteban wherever there’s a pregnant woman.
It makes a muted “juup” sound that even the best hunters confuse with
the call of a bird that is known by the locals as the lion bird, the bluecrowned motmot (Momotus momota), because of the similarity of its
call with the voice of the puma, and it’s found perched quietly on the
branch of one of the trees atop a dark mound in the woods.”
Hilaria Heights and their two trails
A bit further on, 15 minutes later and 1,300 m above sea level,
there’s a path, an opening on the very crest of the mountain, a track
that veers to the left southwest of the royal trail as an alternative route.
Following this trail over the top, a view opens up towards the south
through the dense greenery, all the way to Lake Valencia. The cold
mist blows strongly through this narrow gap in the mountain top. The
shortcut is 3.5 m wide and you can get to the summit in thirty minutes
instead of one hour. If you take this trail you can appreciate how
steep the mountain is and how the trail is cut so deeply into the rock
and protected from the abyss by containing walls. Halfway along
there’s a spot to your left that’s quite flat and another on the right further up, with a panorama over Lake Valencia, the Josefina heights in
the foreground and beyond that the San Diego hills with their characteristic summit, the Macomaco heights. On the upper esplanade we
found some remains of what had been a hut, a number of big rusty
nails with the squared-off edges that characterized them as being
from the 19th Century (Page 35). This was where Goering painted his
watercolor entitled “Lake Valencia seen from one of the surrounding
mountains.” (Page 39) We can be sure of this because of another of his
paintings, a self-portrait (Page 38) which is clearly made at this point,
since you can see him seated on a terraced point before a house, accompanied by his guide, painting the Lake and its surrounding areas.
He chose this small clearing with the trail below because of the pan-
oramic view of the great Lake and La Josefina and Macomaco heights
and because of what he would describe as his small studio up in the
jungle of the Valencia Mountains. In just the same way we were able
to appreciate the panorama; with the difference that nowadays all the
growth is thicker due to the forest having regained its former condition. Goering also wrote:
“…thanks to some good weather, I was able to draw several perspectives from the Summit of beautiful Lake Valencia, which extended
into the distance below my feet.
This artistic relief of the splendid landscape, the enormous variety
of the colors of the undergrowth, the swollen surface of the lake, the
contrasting plains, hills and mountains was all set off so well by the
splendor of the tropical sky.”
This alternative route now winds south, passing through a cutting, past some mud flats caused by the presence of a small stream,
the spring called Agua Fría, where the prints left by the peccaries
were a sign that it was used by them as a bathing and wallowing hole.
It is very likely that the dwelling that used to exist on the flat clearing
we had just passed and where Goering had painted “Lake Valencia
seen from one of the surrounding mountains,” received its water from
a trench dug from this nearby stream. The reason for this hypothesis
is to be found in his painting which is made right on top of the summit, where it is not usual to find water unless it comes from a spring
or stream. In the lower right hand corner there is a small pond, which
could explain why Goering painted this detail into his picture. These
19th Century naturalists and their paintings reflected the landscapes
and objects they were to emulate for eternity in their canvases, exactly as they saw them. Even though early black and white photography existed timidly at this time, it was used for interiors and human
portraits, just as Goering had a portrait made of himself on September 25, 1872 when in Venezuela. For open-air work, with all the complications of the climate and the difficulties for traveling, a canvas and
charcoal, oil paint and tempera were more practical.
Following the road from Agua Fría, the jungle starts to open, moving upwards from below the Summit, but a major outcrop of ferns
99
(Sticherus spp.) makes it difficult to advance; our altimeter shows we’re
at 1,320 meters above sea level.
We retrace our footsteps until we are back at the pass, at an opening in the crest, where the trail divides at 1,300m above sea level. We
set off again searching for the hidden royal road upwards, heading
southwest, and facing the rocky promontories of Hilaria Heights. The
path is much wider than the alternative route we’d just taken, at about
4.80 m. We continue upwards for another half hour, but it gets less
steep by the minute until the trail becomes even wider, opening up
to five meters when we arrive at Buena Vista, captured by Bellermann
in his pencil drawing “View out towards Puerto Cabello” (Page 37). In
this beautiful and descriptive northward-facing painting one can pick
out the Old Trail piercing the forest, with a burned-out hut and in the
distance El Vigia Mountain with its Fort Solano, part of the town of
Puerto Cabello and the sea, and once again we can see how the trail
was well cleared of vegetation and clean at the time. We can also
make out clearly in the sketch the tops of the typical araque palms,
the trumpet tree and bananas. What looks like a wall, to be seen in
the foreground to the left of the trail, is still recognizable today here
and is part of the side of the mountain that remained after cutting the
trail along the mountain shelf. Now the forest has completely recovered and no panoramic view can be had.
Fifteen years after Bellermann, Appun also recounted the following:
“We climbed some more between high walls until the slope slowly
decreased and some splendid vegetation appeared on both sides of the
road, almost excessively exuberant. To the right of the trail there are
once again traces of a bygone village: “Buena Vista”, with bananas,
guavas and rose apples, a magnificent growth of ferns and a beautiful
view of the Campanero hacienda far in the distance, of the San Esteban valley, of the town of Puerto Cabello and of the dark blue sea
where the ships can be quite clearly seen.”
The charred ruins of the building seen in Bellermann’s work of
art reflect the reality of post-independence times. Resentment against
the Spaniards was such that all the ranches, stores and inns along the
route were destroyed, razed to the ground by the locals. Apart from
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that, the people who moved off preferred to burn their dwellings
rather than have them fall into the hands of others.
So, following the narrow track that allows us to advance comfortably in spite of the thick mist which rises at midday and in the afternoon, we pass again before the only wellspring of The Summit, Agua
Fría. The same watering hole that Goering also named where he
slated his thirst and freshened up in its pool; a stream of water that is
also crossed further down by the alternative route we mentioned before, which is in fact one of the sources of Cabriales River.
We too set up our camp at this beautiful spot, but just a bit
higher up than Los Canales, where the night chill was not so intense. Half asleep, rocking slowly in our hammocks under a starry
sky high above the tree tops that waved gently from side to side,
down below we could hear the snorting of some peccaries as they
wallowed in the muddy bottom of the ravine. Upon waking, very
early, we could again hear, off in the distance, the deep groan of a
helmeted curassow.
One more small hill, a bend to the right and you reach a large
clearing in the forest, about 1,000m². You can just imagine the resting
soldiers and their camp. Thus it was in 1822, when the Spanish General Morales passed through here with 1,800 troops, before descending to the foothills of Bárbula and fighting General Páez at the Battle
of Sabana de la Guardia, or when the patriot battalion Bravos de
Apure replaced the Rifles Battalion on its way across The Summit, in
order to hold the access routes they maintained around Puerto Cabello, the last bastion of the Spaniards after the Battle of Carabobo. It
is easy to appreciate that this was an open plain on this summit and
that it could easily have held that number of soldiers. But let us allow
Appun to tell the tale:
“the trail curves around towards the southern incline of the mountain, along a grey and eroded rock covered with beautiful orchids
(Spidendrum cinnabarium and Epidendrum cinnabarium) and
copey vera with their thick skin-like leaves and purple veins, until
reaching a higher point from where one can enjoy a beautiful panorama looking southwards towards the valley and Lake Valencia.”
The road continues to the south, six meters wide at this point,
the thick jungle opening, reaching a high point, covered by an immense growth of ferns just like the one described on the alternative
route, completely free of trees; we reach The Summit at 1,390m
above sea level. From here there is a spectacular view of Valencia
and its surroundings. Bellermann had this to say in his diary on
January 25, 1844:
“From the summit there is a beautiful view of Lake Valencia, the
city itself and all the surrounding areas and a no less beautiful view
of Puerto Cabello, but the latter is very often covered by fog. I stayed
in a lodging room at a general store while I painted the two views.
Vicente, the owner of the store received me very kindly. I hung my
hammock between four posts, since this was the best lodging I could
expect, but his and his wife’s and children’s kindness, together with
the fresh and healthy air common at that height, guaranteed that my
stay would be comfortable. At night I couldn’t sleep much, not because of the cold, but rather because of the busy comings and goings
of the mule train folk that invariably arrived making a terrible row,
singing and knocking loudly at Don Vicente’s door.”
But why don’t we let Goering’s words of the last days of August
1867 describe the same scene that amazes us to this day:
“I cannot but give a brief description of the superb and artistic
panorama laid out before me and which so suddenly catches the eye
of the traveler. Way in the background of the landscape runs the row
of stirrups of the Coastal Mountains towards the shore of the great
Lake, whose surrounding areas are so fertile; above all this, to the
south and southwest one can see all Lake Valencia with its charming
groups of islands and beaches. In the misty distance are the bluish
heights of the Cura and Güigüe mountains; turning one’s regard again
to the south-southwest, one’s amazed eyes discover the plains of Naguanagua and Valencia, and there in the distance you can just make
out the mountains of Nirgua, Montalbán, etc. The veins that leave the
Mountain Range for the plains of Lake Valencia usually dry and bereft
of vegetation, making for a strange image in the eyes of one used to
looking at mountains.”
Nowadays this stretch from Paso Hondo to The Summit takes
between six and seven hours (with a backpack loaded with several
days’ provisions), when, around the middle of the 19th Century, according to the stories of the times, it took around three to four hours;
of course the trail is in worse condition today. From up there one can
see clearly the Spanish Trail as it descends Bárbula to the foot of the
mountain. This south face of the bare mountain is grassy and in the
ravines there are gallery forests, just as the naturalists perceived the
scene in the 19th Century. Appun described it thus:
“From up there, and only for a few minutes, the trail descends almost imperceptibly; the dense jungle opens up, one sees a flat space that
drops off sharply on three sides, and a house: this is the reason for our
journey, the house on San Hilario Heights, called simply “The Summit”.
Nothing is left of this house, which was also the main store of the
trail and one of Appun’s favorite stopover places during his lengthy
stay in these mountains. The naturalist would go on to report:
“The foreground is made up of thick and tall virgin mountainous
jungle through which the road zigzags down to Valencia. The town
can be seen completely upon emerging from the virgin forest, along the
abysses and high cliffs over bare slopes, on descending to the valley
and upon arrival at the foot of the mountain. The mountain of The
Summit is an unquenchable source of pure enjoyment, because both
the flora and the fauna vie to offer those who seek them, their best treasures. Of course the wild element is not lacking, and savage beasts
such as the tiger, the lion and ocelot are common up there. From my
house close to the trail I often used to hear the roar of a jaguar as it
padded past; nearby they also hunted down two huge specimens of
this animal, and just next to my house one of them killed a donkey
and a strong mule. But since the jaguar never returns to eat the animal he has killed, I couldn’t find him and kill him, although I hunted
him for several nights.”
Sad to say that since the last decades of the 20th Century there
are no more signs of jaguars in the Central Coastal Mountains, no
more sightings of these huge and formidable predators, nor signs of
their pawmarks, of any prey hunted by them or evidence of any dead
101
jaguar killed by hunters; the tiger has disappeared from here, it is now
locally extinct (Page 40). Not, however, the puma and the smaller felines such as the ocelot, the jaguarundi, the margay cat Leopardus
wiedii and the tiger cat Leopardus tigrina, which are still there by the
trail and in the forests.
The impression made on the explorer and orchidologist Jean Jules
Linden by the heights of San Hilario, which he climbed up to from
the south from Valencia, was as follows:
“One single spot where the vegetation was less dense, allowed us to
penetrate into the mountain. It was terribly humid and the ground
was soft and spongy, composed of several feet of debris. Tree ferns
abound. Amid the trees and trunks I was able to collect an infinite
number of orchids. This part of the jungle was even more majestic than
the part I had visited some hours earlier. It was composed of enormous
trees of a similar size, whose tops formed a dome that was so dense that
it would not let in the sun’s rays. After half an hour’s walking along a
rough track between the trees, dangerous because of the large amount
of roots that were interlaced across the ground in all directions, we
reached a clearing where we once again caught site of the domed sky.”
(He was possibly referring to Buena Vista which was quite clear of
vegetation at the time).
It is not difficult to imagine how, in the 18th and beginning of the
19th Centuries the Spanish sentries up here were able to observe from
the house or the store just who was coming up the trail, as well as
having a broader view out over Lake Valencia, the plains of Bárbula,
Naguanagua, the Cabriales River and the King’s New Valencia.
The Carabobo Trail descends from the Bárbula Heights
to the Cabriales Valley
We begin our descent on the paving of the trail that immediately
swings to the left, eastwards, yet in spite of the fact that it is easily
recognizable along the side of the mountain, it is completely covered
by robust ferns, grasses and shrubs which make it impossible to advance. To discover what is really left of this stretch, we move forward,
102
armed with machetes, for some 500 meters. It is 3.8m wide and reaches a small overhang with a gallery forest, but here the trail is lost. On
the other side, however, one can see a hillside over which the paving
continues, swinging south, now on the Bárbula Heights.
We return to pick up the current walking track which descends
straight down the cliff in a short cut that later meets up again with the
royal road. We pass land with two cottages of the little coffee farm,
La Haciendita; further on, right on the top of a hill, there is another
coffee plantation belonging to old Francisco Alán Barrios; he has a
donkey and a mule to go down to Bárbula with the harvests of the
allotment and the sacks with the annual crops of coffee.
The Colonial road is not passable at this point, since it is cut into
the mountain by erosion in the form of a little canyon, five meters
deep, completely covered with vegetation of medium-sized bushes.
Further down it continues on a regular incline, with two diversions
that meet up again later, the minimum width of the paving is 3.20m
and the maximum is 3.80m. Halfway down another alternative route
that comes up from the east from the Cabriales stream joins the trail
on the left side, less steep than the one that follows the Bárbula
Heights. Around this area in some of the collapsed sectors you can
see the holes drilled into the rock for the gunpowder used to blow up
the larger rocks. Today the hiker walks along narrow tracks that cut
away and shun the Spanish Trail for long sections. However, we continue our reconnaissance work on the original road, still finding supporting walls and certain parts paved with stones. It descends more
steeply to 600m above sea level, where the curves are sharper and
quite wide, up to 5.8m, and there are two small clearings of about 100
m² each. On observing Pedro Castillo’s mural of the Battle of Sabana
de la Guardia, it was here that the two cannons used by the Royalists
were probably installed.
Now the trail is quite steep, zigzagging down to the foot of the
mountain at 500m above sea level where, to the right, looking down,
is the monolith that commemorates the Battle of Sabana de la Guardia which was fought here (Page 78). The route descends a little more,
turning away to the right where some of the road is still visible, but
it dies in the township of Los Mangos that lies at the foot of the
mountain on the Bárbula savanna.
At Bárbula there is no sign today of the hacienda cited by
Humboldt upon his return from Puerto Cabello to the valleys of
Aragua, with their plantations of cocoa and cotton and the two
incredible de-pulping machines, one driven by a vertical winch
and two mules and the other by a hydraulic wheel driven by water
from a nearby canal. In the olden times the Colonial road continued, passing through the village of Naguanagua, and on to the city
of Valencia. The only part that could be preserved is a very short
section on the grounds of the Botanical Gardens at Naguanagua.
This old trail passes alongside a 400-year-old rain tree (samán,
Samanea saman), the pride of the park and of the people of Valencia, silent witness to the movements of Spaniards, Royalist soldiers and patriots, heroes of the homeland, people in transit, traders and European naturalists of the past, who traveled along the
route to Puerto Cabello or Valencia. Bellermann would describe
this stretch of the trail close to Bárbula as steep and very different
to the part closer to Puerto Cabello; the mountain is bare and arid
with rocky outcrops, he would say, comparing it with the Colonial
road from La Guaira to Caracas. He also told how when you
reached the foot of the mountain, you rode to Naguanagua and to
Valencia across an arid plain with some sugar plantations along
the side of the road, crossed by small streams. Goering, however,
upon concluding his journey along the Old Trail and descending
by the Bárbula track towards Valencia, would write:
“….we came down from the bare mountains towards the plains of
Naguanagua and we reached there at seven in the evening. I was
warmly received in the home of one of my bearers. The next day, Sunday morning, I strode off happily towards Valencia.
The imposing presence of the Coastal Mountain Range at San
Esteban National Park, with clouds embracing The Summit and Hilaria Heights, north of Valencia and south of Puerto Cabello should
remind us of the historical, architectural and archeological heritage
that is jealously guarded by their slopes and dense jungles.
Calle Comercio, Puerto Cabello,
Una calle de Valencia
Jenny de Tallenay, 1880.
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Picture captions
104
Page 6
Location of the San Esteban National Park, showing the Carabobo Trail, with the
current route from San Esteban to Bárbula.
Page 7
Map of Puerto Cabello by Joseph Luis de Cisneros included in his Exact description of the province of Venezuela (Descripción exacta de la provincia de Venezuela), printed in 1764, which shows the trail to the San Esteban Valley and
where it enters the mountains on its way to Valencia.
Page 8
South American Landscape by Ferdinand Bellerman, 1842, showing the San
Esteban River and the Headless Donkey Mountain in the background.
Page 10
The team on the Trail from right to left: Ernesto O. Boede Wantzelius, Juan
E. Hugo-Baasch, park warden Manuel Amaya and, kneeling, park warden
Luis Mendoza.
The Carabobo Trail,
Page 12
Miguel Alejandro Römer. Host of Anton Goering in San Esteban
Luis Federico Blohm (1837-1911) and Clara Fehling de Blohm, hosts of Anton
Goering in Puerto Cabello.
Hugo Valentiner (1831-1915) and Sofia Stürup de Valentiner.
Oscar Baasch, (1857-1910) he was born in San Esteban at Casa Baasch on
February 28.
Page 13
Karl Moritz
Klein, Germany 1797, Colonia Tovar, 1866
Page 15
La Casa Blohm, Puerto Cabello, with the mangrove swamp in the background,
Anton Goering, 1869. The German explorer and painter dispatched his collections from here to England.
Page 16
Ferdinand Bellermann 1814-1899. His 1842 journey to Venezuela was financed by
Frederick William IV, King of Prussia, with support from Alexander von Humboldt.
Anton Goering 1836-1905, guest of Luis Federico Blohm in Puerto Cabello and
Miguel Alejandro Römer in San Esteban.
Karl Ferdinand Appun 1820-1872, spent five years between 1849 and 1857 in the
San Esteban Mountains and was also helped by Humboldt. He died during a stay
in British Guayana.
Page 19
The docks of Puerto Cabello, Ferdinand Bellermann 1842. In this oil painting one
can see The Summit and Breasts of San Hilario.
Page 21
Sugar plantations at San Esteban, Ferdinand Bellermann 1842. Hacienda San
Esteban and Breasts of San Hilario in the distance.
Page 22
Coin (quarter or “cuartillo”) of 1838 was found by family members in the garden at Casa Baasch. This peculiar coin could be cut into quarters according the
purchase price.
Page 24
Comparison of a modern photo of the hieroglyphics on the rock showing a
canoe, a monkey, a tiger’s paw print and human faces, among other shapes,
alongside the Carabobo Trail and The Indians Stone, a drawing made by
Anton Goering.
Page 25
The Chapel at San Esteban Ferdinand Bellermann 1842, also known as Casa
Glöckler.
Page 26
Bearded bellbird (Campanero) Procnias averano.
The remains of Hacienda Campanero with “Las Quíguas”, a humble dwelling and
cocoa plants. The original Stone foundations where used for the hut.
Page 27
Bayonet found in a ravine near Chiquita Heights. Source: Gerardo Hugo-Baasch
Collection.
Page 28
Fragments of period pieces recovered at La Soledad.
Page 29
A ford of the San Esteban River, Puerto Cabello, Anton Goering, 1876. In the
distance of the watercolor one can make out the ravine of the Headless
Donkey.
Page 30
Anton Goering, Harpy eagle Harpia harpyja, the largest raptor of the Central
Coastal Mountain, now in serious danger of extinction.
Page 31
Fragments and objects unearthed at the general store called El Guayabo. Note in
the center the two lead bullets, the medal and crown-embossed button.
Page 32
Thatched hut near The Canals (Los Canales) where Karl Ferdinand Appun stayed
for several months.
Page 33
The Puerto Cabello mountains with the Caribbean in the distance, Anton
Goering, 1877. A view of the Old Trail above the San Esteban valley and Hacienda Campanero.
Page 34
Helmeted curassow, a large and strange bird that lives in the forest at 1,200m
above sea level.
Page 35
Large, square-section nails typical of the 19th Century, unearthed from the clearing where Anton Goering painted the panoramic landscape of Lake Valencia,
and where there was once a hut.
Page 37
View towards Puerto Cabello, an undated pencil drawing by Ferdinand Bellermann.
A good representation of the section of the Old Trail known as Buena Vista.
Page 38
Lake Valencia (Tacarigua) seen from the Coastal Mountains with the painter’s
palm-roofed shelter in the foreground. Self-portrait sketch by Anton Goering. For
another reference, see also Goering’s painting on p. 39
Page 39
Lake Valencia seen from one of the mountains that surround it. Watercolor by
Anton Goering viewed from the alternative route, 1877. See also the self-portrait on p. 38.
Page 40
The Tiger. A drawing by Anton Goering
The jaguar has been hounded by hunters, to the point that it is now locally extinct in the Central Coastal Mountains.
Page 41
Clearing the way to uncover the cobbles and curbs. The 4.5m width of the paving
may clearly be appreciated.
Page 42
Sabana de la Guardia Battle, mural by Pedro Castillo on display at Casa Páez
in Valencia, seriously deteriorated. The southern stretch of the Carabobo Trail
can be seen.
Page 43
The one-horse open two-wheeled buggy quitrín was the most suitable transport
to get from San Esteban to Puerto Cabello.
Page 44
Views from the northern slope towards the San Esteban valley; in the distance
are the Summit and Hilaria Heights with their skirts and peaks, jealously guarding the Spanish Trail.
Page 45
View from the southern slope, from Valencia-Naguanagua towards the mountains of San Esteban National Park. To the left in the background is peak Hilaria
at the center the Hilaria Heights; to the right is the bare mountain of the Bárbula Heights, down which the Colonial trail descends.
Page 46.
Fort Solano, which used to protect Puerto Cabello, the aqueduct, the estuary of
the San Esteban River and part of the Carabobo Trail.
The view west from Fort Solano towards the Marín valley which was the old entry
to the royal trail, heading for San Esteban, in the distance El Palito and the coast.
Page 47
El Portachuelo, Pitiguaos descent, once an alternative to the Old Trail and entry
to the San Esteban valley, now a main road.
The Carabobo Trail zigzagged among the flat part of the San Esteban valley at
the foot of the mountains, just as the main road does now, built over the same
surface.
Page 48
The charming San Esteban valley, with The Summit almost always covered by
clouds, and the high rock faces of the skirts of Hilaria peak, locally known as the
Headless Donkey.
The San Esteban river flows through the valley with the exuberant tropical flora
that so enthralled Bellermann and Goering, as witnessed in their paintings.
Page 49
Panthera onca, the jaguar, or tiger as it is known colloquially, was very common
200 years ago in the mountains and valleys of San Esteban, causing havoc among
the cattle and the mule trains.
105
Page 50
Coming into San Esteban, you can clearly see the width of the original road.
Bottom left: Villa Friedenau, once known as Casa Brandt.
Casa Römer, home to Miguel Alejandro Römer, who immigrated to Venezuela in
1849, where Anton Goering was also a guest.
Opposite: Casa Villa Vincencio now the Ecomuseum of San Esteban.
Page 52
Clockwise: Casa Baasch, where Wilhelm Sievers spent some unforgettable Christmas days in 1885. The garden of Casa Baasch with the 250-year-old medlar tree.
The ruins of Casa Ermen, which later, at the beginning of the 20th Century, was to
be Casa Vollbracht. House of General Bartolomé Salom, now the Salom Museum.
Page 53
The Second Casa Römer, drawn by Bellermann in 1842 as “The Chapel at San
Esteban”, when it was Casa Glöckler.
Page 54
The overhanging shapes of the Headless Donkey, eternal guardian of the Calle
Real of San Esteban once the Carabobo Trail.
Page 55
The San Esteban River with its waterfalls and beautiful ponds always accompanied the traveler on the Colonial trail, here in the lower section of the northern
slope.
Page 56
The Indians’ Stone on the side of the Spanish Trail.
Page 57
The Spanish Trail, close to the park wardens’ post at Campanero, is kept free of
undergrowth, making it easy to appreciate the original paving.
Pagina 58
A ledge with a containing wall and the pillar of one of the six small bridges that
crossed small streams. Tree trunks were placed on top, covered with earth and
compressed vegetable matter.
Page 59
One of the lime ovens near the great bridge, at a spot which Appun would call
the Paso Hondo hamblet.
Page 60
Along the side of the road you can still find stretches of the original stone curbs,
and some early stretches with their stones easily visible.
Page 61
Almost covered by the jungle, one can nevertheless appreciate the Gothic arch
of the Paso Hondo Bridge.
Page 62
Dawn in Paso Hondo, with the road surface visible to the right.
Page 63
La Soledad, which was, in the days of Appun, a great plain, free of forest, is now
covered mainly by palm trees, the reason why our guides today call it El Palmar.
Page 64
Up from La Soledad the current road reveals, to the left of the photograph, the
drainage canals of the Colonial road.
106
Page 65
The surface and huge walls of the trail are clear to see, but the landslides in the
background have destroyed a large part of the original path.
Page 66
Tapirs Tapirus terrestres are still common in these woods, and they use the cuttings of the royal road on their nocturnal ramblings.
Page 67
At a height of 900m above sea level, long stretches of the original trail is conserved, in spite of the invasion of araque palms with their strange roots. See also
pages 32 and 38.
Page 68
In the steep parts, higher up, large stones were used to surface the trail, for the
flatter parts small stones were used, easily recognizable once the vegetation,
humus and earth are removed and the paving is uncovered. In the background
the present narrow part is to be seen.
Page 69
Bigger trees that have fallen during a storm block our way at between five
hundred and eight hundred meters above sea level, and a route has to be forged with a machete.
The buttressed “niño” or “cucharón” Gyranthera caribensis, which grows up to
forty meters tall, is common on the coastal mountain range and especially
along the sides of the trail at altitudes from two hundred to eight hundred meters above sea level.
Page 70
On the northern slope of the trail, the jungle envelops everything.
Page 71
Cutting and opening in the top of the mountain of an alternative route to The
Summit
Note the steepness of the cutting into the side of the mountain and the narrower
trail of 3.5m.
Page 72
A 1.5 meter high containing wall, protecting the road in the steep ravines.
Page 73
Current condition of the trail, a short section through the forest at the part known
in Bellermann’s painting, as Buena Vista.
Page 74
View west from The Summit, similar to the one probably enjoyed by the European naturalists of the 19th Century.
Page 75
The Summit, the point where the trail comes clear of the forest to begin its run
down the bare southern face, the road cutting still visible to the sides.
Page 76
Clockwise: The Spaniards had to use gunpowder to blast the bigger rocks.
Coming down from The Summit, which can be seen in the distance, a curve with
its containing wall can be also seen.
The course of the road across the savanna opens to spectacular views of the
ravines with their gallery forests and nearby escarpments.
Wide curves, sharp and steep run over the crest of Bárbula.
Page 77
On this descent and pronounced curve, the absence of grass, caused by forest
fires, allows one to clearly make out the cobbles and larger stones.
On the Bárbula promontory one can see the road cuttings on the crest and in
the ravines of the mountain, below are Naguanagua and Valencia.
Page 78
A violent fire has uncovered the junction with another road on the southern
slope, an alternative to the royal way. The surface of the road and a containing
wall can be seen in the foreground.
On this steep slope, the royal road makes its descent in zigzag fashion and the
results of a grass fire make it easily visible.
A view from The Summit towards the southern slope of the Spanish Trail; in
the center of the photograph one can see the trail going down to Valencia
along the crest of Bárbula.
At the foot of the mountain, the monolith commemorating the Battle of Sabana
de la Guardia, with the Hilaria Heights in the background.
Page 79
Old Francisco Alan Barrios still transports the harvests he collects from the
coffee plantations and small farms scattered around the wooded mountains,
down the Spanish Trail to the city on the back of a donkey, just like in the olden days.
Page 80
South American landscape, Ferdinand Bellermann 1842, showing the woods and
the creek at Campanero.
San Esteban
Ferdinand Bellermann, 1842.
107
Bibliografía
108
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Museos Nacionales, Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas, 2007.
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Díaz Peña, N.: “Aproximación a nuestra historia-prehispánica”.
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109
ÍÍndice iconográfico
Página 6
Mapa elaborado por Pascual Estrada, Oscar Todtmann Editores, Caracas.
Página 7
“Plano de Puerto Cabello” de Joseph Luis de Cisneros en su Descripción exacta de la provincia
de Venezuela, impreso en 1764. Tomado del libro de Federico Vegas et al., El continente de Papel,
Archivo de Indias, Ediciones Fundación Neumann, Caracas, 1984.
Página 8
“Paisaje Sudamericano” Ferdinand Bellermann. Tomado del Catálogo Ferdinand Bellermann en
Venezuela, Memoria del Paisaje 1842-1845, Fundación Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas, 1991.
Página 12
Los esposos Valentiner. Archivo de la familia Valentiner.
Los esposos Blohm. Archivo de la familia Blohm.
Miguel Alejandro Römer. Archivo de la familia Römer.
Oscar Baasch. Archivo de la familia Baasch.
Página13
“Karl Moritz”, de Ferdinand Bellermann. Tomado del libro de Eduardo Röhl, Exploradores famosos
de la naturaleza venezolana, Tipografía El Compás, Caracas, 1948.
Página 15
La Casa Blohm, Puerto Cabello, con los manglares al fondo, Antón Goering 1869.
Archivo de la familia Blohm.
Página 16
“Retrato del pintor Ferdinand Bellermann”, óleo sobre lienzo. Tomado del libro de Renate
Löschner, Bellermann y el paisaje venezolano 1842/1845, Asociación Cultural Humboldt y
Fundación Neumann, Caracas, 1977.
“Karl Ferdinand Appun”. Tomado del libro de Eduardo Röhl, Fauna descriptiva de Venezuela,
Caracas, 1956.
“Anton Goering”, foto tomada en Caracas el 25 de septiembre de 1872. Tomado del libro Dirk
Bornhorst. Venezuela, Anton Goering 1836-1905, Asociación Cultural Humboldt, Caracas, 1969.
Página 19
“Muelles en Puerto Cabello”, óleo sobre cartón, 1842, Ferdinand Bellermann. Tomado del libro
de Renate Löschner, Bellermann y el paisaje venezolano 1842/1845, Asociación Cultural Humboldt
y Ediciones Fundación Neumann, Caracas, 1977.
Página 21
“Plantaciones de azúcar en San Esteban”, óleo sobre cartón, Ferdinand Bellermann. Tomado del
libro de Renate Löschner, Bellermann y el paisaje venezolano 1842/1845, Asociación Cultural
Humboldt y Fundación Neumann, Caracas, 1977.
Página 29
“Un vado en el río San Esteban, Puerto Cabello”. Tomado del libro de Anton Goering, Vom
tropischen Tieflande zum ewigen Schnee, Adalbert Fischer´s Verlag, Leipzig, 1892
Página 30
“Águila arpía”. Tomado del libro de Antón Goering, Vom tropischen Tieflande zum ewigen Schnee,
Adalbert Fischer´s Verlag, Leipzig, 1892.
Página 32
“Los Canales”, grabado de Karl Ferdinand Appun. Tomado del libro de Karl Ferdinand Appun,
En los trópicos, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, 1961.
Página 33
“Serranía de Puerto Cabello con el Mar Caribe al fondo”, Goering Anton 1877. Tomado del libro Dirk
Bornhorst. Venezuela, Anton Goering 1836-1905, Asociación Cultural Humboldt, Caracas, 1969.
Página 37
“Vista hacia Puerto Cabello”, Ferdinand Bellermann. Tomado del libro de Renate Löschner,
Bellermann y el paisaje venezolano 1842/1845, Asociación Cultural Humboldt y Fundación
Neumann, Caracas, 1977.
Página 38
“Vista sobre el Lago Valencia (Tacarigua) desde la Cordillera de la Costa con choza del pintor en
el primer plano”. Tomado del libro de Antón Goering, Vom tropischen Tieflande zum ewigen
Schnee, Adalbert Fischer´s Verlag, Leipzig, 1892.
Página 39
“El Lago de Valencia rodeado de montañas”, Antón Goering, 1877. Tomado del libro de Antón
Goering, Vom tropischen Tieflande zum ewigen Schnee, Adalbert Fischer´s Verlag, Leipzig, 1892.
Página 40
“El Tigre”. Tomado del libro de Antón Goering, Vom tropischen Tieflande zum ewigen Schnee,
Adalbert Fischer´s Verlag, Leipzig, 1892.
Página 43
Dibujo realizado por Ulrich Baasch.
Página 80
“Bosque y quebrada en Campanero”, Ferdinand Bellerman. Tomado del Catálogo Ferdinand
Bellermann en Venezuela, Memoria del Paisaje 1842-1845, Fundación GAN, Caracas, 1991.
Página 82
“Un tranquilo paraje cerca del lago de Valencia”, James Mudie Spence, 1871-1872. Tomado del
libro de Elías Pino Iturrieta/Pedro Enrique Calzadilla La mirada del otro, Fundación Bigot,
Caracas. Sin fecha.
Página 24
Antón Goering “Piedra del Indio, en el valle San Esteban”. Tomado del libro de Antón Goering,
Vom tropischen Tieflande zum ewigen Schnee, Adalbert Fischer´s Verlag, Leipzig, 1892.
Página 88
“Arriero cargando los burros”, Martín Tovar y Tovar, 1862. Tomado del libro de Elías Pino
Iturrieta/Pedro Enrique Calzadilla La mirada del otro, Fundación Bigot, Caracas. Sin fecha.
Página 25
Capilla en San Esteban, Ferdinand Bellermann, 1842. Tomado del libro de Renate Löschner,
Bellermann y el paisaje venezolano 1842/1845, Asociación Cultural Humboldt y Fundación
Neumann, Caracas, 1977.
Página 103
Calle Comercio, Puerto Cabello y Una calle de Valencia, Jenny de Tallenay, 1880. Tomado del libro
Souvenirs du Venezuela, Librairie Plon, París, 1884
Página 26
“Pájaro Campanero o herrero”. Tomado del libro de William H Phelps y Rodolphe Meyer de
Schauensee, Aves de Venezuela, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, EUA, 1978.
110
Página 107
“San Esteban”, Ferdinand Bellermann, 1842. Tomado de Bellermann, Ferdinand. Landschafts-und
Vegetations-bilder aus den Tropen Südamerikas, erläutert von Hermann Karsten, R. Friedländer &
Sohn, Berlín, 1894.
111
112