Villa de Leyva

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At the bus station in Bogota I asked a lady which terminal for Tunja (two hours away), and we were in luck. From some of her Spanish and her body language I gathered that she was going there also. This saved us the usual hassle of wandering around being yelled at by men saying the names of every town in Colombia as quickly as they can! We squashed in the the colectivo, the journey was surprising as the scenery was very green, rolling hills and plenty of cows around. Reminded me a bit of Ireland. We changed at Tunja for the downhill journey to Villa de Leyva our destination, another colonial town. With a much drier and pleasant climate and is a favourite haunt of Bogotanos for the weekend. The bus to Villa de Leyva was a strange bunch of characters, there was a couple of women with newborn babies also. Villa de Leyva has a huge cobbled (and uneven) main plaza, it is one of the biggest in South America. We stayed in a hotel on the square which made it easy to get around. The town is set next to a large hill/mountain behind it and the surrounds are very dry and many tomato crops around. We ate at a nice restaurant on the square with juices that were gorgeous. Our second day we hired a taxi to take us to some of the local sites in the surrounding countryside. First stop was a convent, Convento del Santo Ecce Homo. It was a great building an old 1620´s Dominican convent. There was a lovely courtyard, with well and garden and also an eyecatching chapel. It was a pleasant surprise. Second stop was to a site with the similar idea to Stonehenge but much smaller and more recent (early AD) and was used by the Musica people who were the local indigenous people. You can see from the pictures that a few of the rocks have a familar look. Our final stop was to see El Fosil. It was a large fosil of a sea dwelling dinosaur some 115 million years old. When Villa de Leyva was once a sea bed. There was plenty of other smaller fosils but nothing as impressive as the big one itself. We really enjoyed our time in Villa de Leyva as it gave us a chance to relax and enjoy the surroundings, there were some nice colonial villas around and plenty of young kids in their school uniform making the place seem very alive. We left for our long journey to Salento in the coffee region of Colombia feeling very relaxed.

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