25th June, Bogota a Villa de Leyva

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25th June. Bogota a Villa de Leyva

Not that impressed with Bogota and its weather, we decided to leave! We thought we'd get the Transmilenio , which is supposed to be one of the fastest and cheapest ways of getting around. A single tickets costs 1,500 pesos (about 35p), but the bus system is really difficult to understand. We kept getting on them, and the transmilenio would just zoom past our stop! So after getting lost, we finally realised it would be a better idea to just get a taxi!

We arrived at Termial de Transporte with 5 minutes to go before the bus left. I say bus, it was actually more of a mini van! It was a four hour drive to Villa de Leya, which is a small colonial town in Colombia. The population is just 12,000. It was great to get out of the city, there are no skyscrapers, no traffic, or any zombie type homeless people running after you down the street, screaming, english pigs!!! It is a small town, all cobblestones and surrounded by mountains and countryside. You feel really safe to walk around too.

We didnt have a hostel booked, but we walked into a few, before finally getting a cheap double room for 30,000 pesos per night at Hospederia del Villa. We wondered around for a while, past the tourist information, which was literally a small open tent with just one young policia turismo sat in it. Afterwards we bumped into 3 lads from england who had been in the mini van with us. We went for dinner with them to a restaurant facing the main plaza, which was nice. It was good to hear some english accents (even if they were cockney!) after all the americans we'd met!

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