OSLO, Norway -- Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado appeared in public for the first time in 11 months early Thursday when she waved to supporters at a hotel in Norway's capital hours after her daughter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.

Machado had been in hiding since Jan. 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in a protest in Caracas, Venezuela's capital.

Machado said in an audio recording of a phone call published on the Nobel website that she wouldn't be able to arrive in time for the ceremony but that many people had "risked their lives" for her to arrive in Oslo.

"I am very grateful to them, and this is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people," she said, before indicating that she was about to board a plane.

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