Colonia Tovar

Colonia Tovar was planned in the early 1840s as a way of bringing European farmers to Venezuela. A colonising company was formed by the geographer Agostino Codazzi and Ramón Díaz, with Martín Tovar y Ponte, the Count of Tovar, as guarantor, and his nephew Manuel Felipe Tovar donated the land. Codazzi chose a site in the coastal range with a climate like that of the Kaiserstuhl in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and recruited settlers in the town of Endingen.

About 390 emigrants, most of them from the Kaiserstuhl, travelled down the Rhine and sailed from Le Havre in January 1843. Smallpox on board forced a quarantine at Choroní, and after being received by President Carlos Soublette they reached the site on 8 April 1843, now counted as the town's foundation day. Among the first residents were naturalists, writers and painters, including Ferdinand Bellermann, a painter sponsored by Humboldt.

The colony first grew coffee, then vegetables and fruit for the markets of Caracas and La Victoria, and made barrels. Difficult communications kept it isolated for more than a century, and its population grew slowly or even fell as young people left. That changed in the 1960s, when tourism arrived: cottages became guesthouses and restaurants, and the town became one of the most prosperous in the country.

Colonia Tovar is often called "the Germany of the Caribbean". For generations the settlers kept the dialect of Baden, their food and their dress, and some residents still speak Alemán Coloniero, a Low Alemannic dialect of German, although the town's native language today is Spanish and its people are fully part of Venezuelan life.

The Church of St Martin of Tours, in the centre, copies the church of Endingen and holds an image of the saint brought by the founders. St Martin's day, 11 November, is the town's great feast, held together with a Festival of Flowers, Fruits and Crafts at which prizes go to the best produce. Carnival parades bring out the Jokilis and the Gorilas, and since 1992 the town has hosted an international chamber music festival, joined in 1997 by a second annual festival.

Half-timbered buildings and steep roofs in the Kaiserstuhl style are part of the town's identity, and local crafts — ceramics, woodwork and wrought iron — are sold alongside the food. On weekends the streets fill with visitors from Caracas, Valencia and Maracay.

Colonia Tovar's population has grown fast since 1990, from about 3,400 to some 21,000 in 2016. The town sits in a mountain amphitheatre at the head of the Tuy river, with chalets scattered across small plots of land around the centre.

Farming remains important: the colonieros grow temperate crops such as strawberries, peaches, garlic, carrots, potatoes, cabbage and flowers, sold across the country, especially in Caracas, Valencia, Maracay and La Victoria. Sausage makers, bakeries, breweries and makers of jams and preserves turn the harvest into products for visitors, and tourism, mainly from the central cities, has been replacing agriculture as the main source of income.

Weekdays are quiet and agricultural, with mist rolling over the fields at dawn and dusk. Weekends and holidays bring heavy traffic on the mountain road, and the centre becomes crowded with day-trippers buying fruit, sausages and crafts. Like the rest of the region, the town lives with power and water cuts and the wider economic crisis.

The town's food is German in origin and Venezuelan in setting. Restaurants serve sausages, steaks and cured meats, and the small restaurants and cafés offer strudel, gugelhupf, a ring-shaped cake, Kaiserschmarrn, torn sweet pancakes, and Black Forest cake. Locally brewed beer is part of the identity, and chocolate is made locally.

The mountain farms supply the rest. Strawberries with cream are the classic purchase, along with peaches, blackberries, passion fruit and tree tomatoes, and stalls sell homemade jams, preserves, sweets and fruit juices. Fresh vegetables from the surrounding plots go home with visitors to Caracas.

The charcuterie is the other speciality: sausage factories in and around the town make embutidos — cured and cooked meats such as sausages, bologna and salami — and Vienna sausages, which the restaurants serve. Small producers also make sauces, pasta, biscuits and sweets in the German manner, and churros and cakes sit beside the strudel in the cafés. Strawberry and other fruit juices are sold alongside the local beer.