From Bogota we went north to Villa de Leyva, an old colonial town with cobblestone streets and whitewashed houses and as quaint as the guidebooks say. It has a huge central square for a relatively small 'cbd' and when we arrived, it was showing the remnants of its annual kite festival that had been held the previous weekend. I could see how the open space and brilliant blue skies could be such an attraction for kite flyers. Villa de Leyva is in quite an arid area, and the Iguaque National Park next to the town has unique plants and is a sacred place for the local indigenous people. We enjoyed the temperate climate of Villa de Leyva after the cool of Bogota (average year round temperature of 14 degrees). We also enjoyed doing some physical activity - cycling and hiking - as we are both feeling like our finely honed, taut and trim bodies :) are sliding into serious disrepair.
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| Villa de Leyva central square |
We spent most of one day on rented bicycles touring around the area. Fortunately the traffic in Villa de Leyva is minimal and much slower than in Bogota and Cartegena. Our first stop was the Azul pools - promoted to tourists as unusually blue lakes. Yes they are blue. It was early in the day and they didn't look that inviting to swim in so we decided to push on. It was a steep hill back up to the main road and Ivan had just started up it when his chain broke. Luckily for us there was a group that had arrived at the pools on horseback at the same time as we had and the group's guide had a mobile phone that he used to call the person we rented the bikes from. They sent a car out to pick us and the bikes up and we went back to town to select another bike for Ivan. Then we headed off on the bikes again!......
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| Ivan and the fossil |
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| synchronised goats |
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| A fuel station named after our boat! |
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| the old monastery |
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| the Terracotta House |
The next day we walked for a few hours with Christian, a local guide, and another couple into the Iguaque National Park behind the town. As we walked we stopped frequently to admire the indigenous flora, including a number of types of orchids. The views were panoramic from the top.
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| Iquaque National Park |
The next day as we walked to a nearby waterfall, again we were interested to see many different types of plants, including wild native tomatoes and potatoes, as Colombia is where these staples of our diet today originate from. The native tomatoes were tiny, but delicious.
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| native tomato |
On our last morning in Villa de Leyva we wandered around the small weekly market. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a range of good quality produce at a market. The consistent year round climate of the area allows many fruit and vegetables to grow all of the time rather than being seasonal.
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| A farrow of piggy banks...just for Wilma |
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| market produce |
We caught the bus back to Bogota to spend our final night there before going back to Panama. Verne and Troy were having a housewarming party that night so we got to say a final goodbye to them and their friends we had met previously. On return to the hostel we were staying in my uneasiness about Bogota is confirmed when we are approached by an American man claiming to have been robbed and asking for money to help him out. While his situation sounded plausible, we didn’t really believe him, and he wasn’t going to stop his pleading. So it being midnight, standing in a cold, dark street and wanting to get rid of this guy, we gave him 5,000 pesos (about $2.50 – enough for a meal) just so he would go away. It worked.
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