Boyaca
Trip Start
Sep 20, 2008
1
16
29
Trip End
Sep 2009
Villa de Leiva,
Colombia
Friday, January 16, 2009
Well... after a few days in Bogotá, we got invited to spend a few days in a very famous Colombian town, Villa de Leyva. A friend of ours, Simon's, dad lives there so we decided to go for a couple of days to visit him. The idea was to spend a few days in Villa de Leyva and surroundings, Boyacá department, with Simon and then just the two of us head to the neighbouring department - Santander.
The moment you leave Bogota the adventure starts. The landscape is amazing and it changes so quick that you don't even realize it, going from extended savannahs to rocky mountains, valleys and rivers, it's amazing! After about three hours, we finally got to Villa de Leyva. Amazing town!!!! It's beautiful, the whole town should be really pedestrian all the streets are of rock, tiny roads and very colourful and colonial looking houses.
After having some lunch, and seeing the need of some shopping for Rafas house, we decided we needed a cash machine... I think we have NEVER laughed so much as we did at that moment. Ali went inside the cash machine cubicle and the moment he straightened his arm up to put in his card the whole thing started moving towards him, almost crushing him against the wall. I swear to god we cried. We were just looking around and waiting for someone to pop out of nowhere and said we had been punk'd or something. Shame we didn't have a camera with us and anyway it was a question of seconds but it was hilarious.
Finally we arrived to Rafas house. It's a little country house about 15 minutes away from the town. Although it's not very big, the surroundings are amazing. Just behind the house is a national park called "la Reserva de Iguaque", a whole mountain that you climb up and at the top of it you will find a lagoon where the indigenous used to do lots of religious rituals. Unfortunately the lack of time and good weather didn't allow us to go up, but only to be able to see it from the house, was already stunning.
Got settled in and started up our rounds of drinks around the bonfire, and after singing, joking and staring at the full moon and stars for a couple of hours called it a night and went to bed.
The Saturday was an interesting but very tiring day. Woke up nice and early to find ourselves having caldo (potato soup with meat) for breakfast "god bless Rafael". After that we headed out to "La Periquera" its a collection of 7 different waterfalls only one of which was abailable to visit because of rock slides, SHAME. After that visit a couple of towns around Villa de Leyva. First it was Raquira, very nice art crafts town with a massive street market and a very colourful church. All the street was full of hanging hammocks, tourists bargain and lovely Boyacence music. Found a "bar" and decided to have Alis first rana "toad" game. It's basically a standing tall box that has lots of holes, each has a score and two toads which will give you the higher scores of the game. You play by throwing some metal rings and whoever loses pays for the drinks. Ali took the advantage of his beginners luck - since although Simon beat him, he beat Caro :), meaning Caro paid the drinks. That was a lot of fun. After that we walked a little bit around town finding amusing, in front of the church, a sign that said "Favor no PISSar el pasto" and just by the side of it a fountain with a little mud statue of a boy pissing. HEHE
After that we went to a town called Sutamarchan, famous for its Longanisa (long chorizo type sausage), DELICIOUS, although we quickly found out why its not famous for anything else. Probably the only time we can actually say in Colombia, the food was HORRIBLE, and even Ali agreed with that.
On the way back to the house, we stopped at Villa de Leyvas plaza to enjoy a little bit of the town live. While we where walking around ali made us crack up with laughter - If a PANaderia sells pan (bread), a DROGueria sells drogas (drugs), what the hell does a PERSONeria sell?? We can only assume it was some kind of brothel, hehe. After finding out its only the village advisor office. After a few beers at the plaza we decided to head back to the house for dinner and a couple of drinking games with Rafa and Juana. It wasnt a couple of drinks! Caro ended absolutely smashed so we decided to take advantage of it making her lose in ALL the games. Lots of fun.
The next day, after another delicious caldo and saying bye to Simon who was heading back to Bogota, we promised a fajitas dinner to juana and rafael and left to visit the rest of the towns from boyaca. It had to be quite a run in order to be able to visit everything we wanted adding to that a massive hungover, bigger on caros side, it was quite a struggle... but we managed.
We started in Nobsa. A very lovely little town famous for its crafts. We did a quick drive through but manage to appreciate what everyone means by it. After that we drive through a town (cant remember the name unfortunately), famous for its feijoa - famous and delicious Colombian fruit, good for eating and drinking.
Next stop - Iza, "The most beautiful town in Colombia" what a disappointment!. We went completely out of the way, in the middle of nowhere to find a completely soulless town. Dont get us wrong, it was nice. Little narrow stone streets, dirty white buildings, and all... but no character, and we have come across much nicer towns already in this trip. Guess its all opinion...
After hearing about the amazing wines that are being produced in Punta Larga (award winning in Europe!), we decided it was wrong to miss the vineyard here, for the sake of tourism, you know! Caros dad happened to be friends with the owner so after asking him his name and stuff we headed down there to pay him a visit. Punta Larga is not even a town, but its a very beautiful long street in the middle of the highway packed with furniture stores -and apparently very famous for it. We finally got to the vineyard and after asking the doorman for the owner we headed in to enjoy the spectacular view and wait for him, slowly getting drunk on the very strong wine smell all over the place. At last we met the guy... very interesting actually starting by his name "Marquez" (Duke, in english). He was absolutely pissed, and soo funny and we soon found ourselves sat with him and few locals "tasting" a very nice bottle of homegrown wine. We were definitely not amoung others as sober as us, and we were soon being persuaded to stay that night to join them in the local fair in Duitama, full of parties, concerts and ending up the next day with a very important bullfight. Unfortunately we had other plans and lack of time so we sadly said no (we didnt really believe any of them would make it past 7 in the evening without collapsing in a drunken mess).
After a very looong goodbye, realizing the time and remembering we had promised to cook that night, headed back to Villa de Leyva not before making a quick 5 minute stop in tunja to buy a couple of things we were missing. Five minutes??? Bollocks!!!! We have never seen a bunch of people so stupid. Actually a hole city. We where wondering around the city for nearly two hours from one side to another looking for a huge commercial centre. We asked at least 5 people all of them who will send us on different directions "look for the green bridge", "green bridge?? No, its about half an hour west of town", "No, its right in the centre", "Left at the roundabout", "right at the roundabout". Eventually we gave up on the locals, used our noses, and found it nowhere near any of the recommendad locations, about half a km from where we started.
After all that adventure headed back to Villa de Leyva, promising NEVER to be back in Tunja.
Next stop... Santander.
