Between a valley and its plantations

A few weekends ago I went for a walk with a friend and her family to a town in Aragua state (Venezuela) called San Mateo.

After visiting a historical place which I will tell you about in another post, we took a path through the plantations that are in this valley to get to the center of town. We could have taken a bus there but I convinced them to walk, it wasn't very far, about 15 minutes.

This is a road used mostly by the people who work in these fields, but also by curious people like us who wanted to see the crops up close 😄.

In these lands that belonged to the family of The Liberator Simón Bolívar, sugar cane was planted for years, a crop that today is still in production and is almost an emblem of the valleys of Aragua state.

We had advanced only a few minutes when we saw the furrow where the river that is used to irrigate these plantations flows, it looked very clean. My friend's youngest son was very excited and wanted to swim there 😃, it was very hot that day, even though it was a bit cloudy.

She explained to him that she hadn't brought change of clothes, so he could not get wet. We continued our walk and I must say that the scenery of these productive valleys is very gorgeous.

Among the crops we were able to identify are: sugar cane, bananas, chives, tomatoes, ají dulce (sweet peppers), but there are many more.

We didn't come across many people on this road, and those who did pass were either on bicycles or motorcycles, we were the only walkers, and understandably so, it was a hot midday.

Although it is a small municipality (58 Km2), San Mateo produces a large amount of agricultural products that are distributed to nearby cities. Sometimes we wonder where what we eat comes from and we don't know these fertile fields that feed us.

When we arrived downtown we went to buy some bread at a bakery that my friend knew, then to have a cold drink and then we went to the Bolivar Square, it had been years since I had been in this town.

In front of the Bolivar Square is the church of San Mateo Apostle, a very old structure, built in 1620. It looks very well preserved from the outside.

Also in front of the square is the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Belen, patron saint of Aragua state, which was built in the 1920s. This place honors the apparition of the Virgin that occurred in 1709 according to historical documents.

This other building, also in the surroundings of the square, caught my attention because of its circular shape, but I didn't know what works there. It has a cross, so probably something religious.

There are probably many other interesting places to see in the town of San Mateo, but on this occasion our tour ended there.

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_{All photos are my property and were taken with a Fujifilm FinePix XP90 digital camera and a Redmi 9 phone / Todas las fotos son de mi propiedad y fueron hechas con una cámara digital Fujifilm FinePix XP90 y un teléfono Redmi 9}