Villa de Leyva, Sept 17-29

The Villa de Leyva main plaza is said to be the largest in Colombia.

A view of the city from a shrine up on the mountains to the east.

Typical architecture.

Villa de Leyva and the surrounding area have been a haven of safety for those in Bogota throughout the years of violence in Colombia.  So during the years of turbulence within Colombia, it saw mostly Bogotanos, now it is a destination for a wider sector of Colombians along with international tourists.  It is noted for how closely it still resembles the colonial days with the architecture and cobblestone streets.  A truly bucolic place to be, tourists are told they can walk anywhere, anytime of day in and out of the city. That is music to the ear!


Unless you get traveler´s GI issues or a cold.  We each got one of those, so that is partly why we stayed in Villa de Leyva for so long.  A very nice place to be feeling under the weather.

Beautiful courtyards.

We´ve definitely seen multiple efforts directed at encouraging recycling and separating types of trash.  Not exactly sure it´s happening, but the effort has definitely started.

A shrine here, a shrine there.  This one has some fossils which are characteristic to the are.

Dogs are happy in Colombia from what we have seen.  They are well fed and walk around wagging their tails for no obvious reason.

Duane entertaining himself one day when I wasn´t feeling good.

Looking back down at Villa de Leyva.

Once we were on the mend, we did a great walk up a mountain just behind the Renacer Hostal where we camped for over a week.  It was a more than 3 hours up.  We really didn´t know what we were going to see.  Turns out there are people who live up there, with their cattle and crops.

In the valley 3+ hours up the mountain.

This brown guy seriously needs a hair cut!

They have a great open air market on Saturdays. We ended up cooking for ourselves most of the time partly because this is a tourist town - we paid over $15 for pizza, over $3 for a simple bowl of tomato soup, $5 for a hamburger.  Not cheap for our budget.  But then, Colombia is not proving to be the cheapest place to travel.  The 2009 Lonely Planet guide book is definitely already dated on pricing.




We visited two areas which had multiple water falls. Apparently there are over 100 waterfalls in the area.  Basically, we hopped on a local bus with a map from the hostal and then followed our noses.

Our self-appointed guide at the ¨La Periquera¨ waterfalls.

Still difficult taking pictures with that damn button....

¨El Hayal¨ waterfall.

The clutch move at ¨El Paso del Angel¨ waterfall.

Some shots of our 1.2 km walk to and from town and the Renacer Hostal.

You may have expected this.

Yes, a military base on the dirt road up to the hostal.

Closer to town...

Hammocks and a common kitchen for all.

We camped 9 nights for COP 144,000 (about $72).

El Renacer Hostal - we highly recommend!

The guidebook attractions for tourists in the area include a museum where a remarkably complete and old fossil is housed.  I don´t recall the type of ¨araus¨, but it was impressive.  Another major attraction are ruins from one of the pre-colombian cultures which archeologists now interpret to have been a ritual site that paid tribute to fertility and served as a means of telling the seasons by how the sun fell on a series of fallic columns.  We rented bikes to do the tour of the attractions which was also a great way to see the surrounding countryside.

The conditions in this area were ripe for preservation of fossils.

One of many columns.

Well, I hope you appreciate these pictures.  Even if you don´t, please act like you do. I will not be posting this many pictures in a post unless I figure out how to do it without taking the amount of time I have spent on this post.  It´s been pretty rediculous.

VMonk