Villa de Leyva back to Bogotá

We got up early to visit the Saturday farmer's market - the main reason for this trip to Villa de Leyva. 

The white walls of the buildings stood out starkly in the early morning sunshine and we were pleased we went early as it became quite hot as the morning progressed. 

The market was a lot of fun: lots of colour; foods; the usual trash and treasure; people hungrily scooping in breakfast; produce loaded onto shoulders to fill the stalls; kids and families chatting and filling containers with fruit into ornate displays.

We returned for a quick and yummy breakfast at out hotel (delicious eggs!) and met up once more with Herman who took us on a walking tour of the town.

Villa de Leyva was founded in 1572 as a retreat for Spanish clerics and viceroys, so it has lots of history. It was declared a National Monument in 1954 for the preservation of its architecture: its red tile roofs and painted green balconies are quite striking.

We visited several colonial buildings and other sights: the building known as the Casa del Primer Congreso, in which the first Convention of the United Provinces of New Granada (present-day Colombia) was held and where Camilo Torres was named as chairman in 1812; the Casa del Cabildo which is the home of the council prefecture, the court, jail and the People's Bank (Banco Popular); the Casa de Nariño where Antonio Nariño died in 1823 (he was one of the early political and military leaders of the Independence movement in the New Granada); the first factory of distillations of liquor of the New Kingdom of Granada; the house where the Independence hero Antonio Ricaurte was born (he died in 1814 at San Mateo, Venezuela, in a famous act of courageous self-sacrifice while fighting in Bolívar's army and for this he is remembered in the last verse of Colombia's National Anthem); the former convent of St. Augustine founded in 1850; the Franciscan convent San Francisco, founded in 1614 and abandoned in 1821; the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites, founded in 1645: the nuns live here permanently devoted entirely to prayer and manual labour - and never making eye contact with anyone!

As we wandered around, a circus van which had sat in front of us at the top of the hill yesterday when we were held up by roadworks and had a very annoying loud-speaker going non-stop blasting out ultimo dias, ultimo tres ("last days, last three") kept driving up and down the cobblestoned streets, today blasting its message as ultimo dias, ultimo dos ("last days, last two") - we started to find it funny, the monotonous shrill and even funnier (shouldn't laugh!) when today it had 3 or 4 dwarfs hanging off the back trailer dressed like something out of "Snow White".

We drove out of town to visit a very odd sight: the Casa Terracota. It is a home designed by architect Octavio Mendoza In a Gaudi-esque design but he is yet to move into it and in the meantime is making money out of opening it up to tourists as an attraction.

We continued our drive out of Villa de Leyva to the village of Monquirá where the Museo El Fósil is housed. The hills around Villa de Leyva are littered with fossils, remnants of a time when the arid landscape was under a couple fathoms of seawater. Finding small fossils is almost a daily occurrence. In June 1977 a farmer plowing his farm discovered the fossilized remains of a monster fish. According to paleontologists, this is a Kronosaurus and is a spectacular 7 meters long. Apart from this large fossil, there is a large collection of ammonites, fish and many other species and a laboratory. We were given an excellent tour in English by a high school student who volunteers there and plans to go to university to work in the field - a very bright boy!

We began then our long journey back to Bogotá. The traffic was awful. Along the roadside we saw many large fibas, a large cactus. We stopped at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Chiquinquirá of beautiful Neoclassical architecture and visited by Pope John Paul II In 1986.

A quick lunch stop at a roadside kiosk for some arepas de queso (grilled corn cake with cheese) unfortunately cold but still yummy.

On our way again and finally reached Bogotá about 4 p.m. After checking in (same hotel as before), we walked to a nearby shopping centre to change some $US into local pesos at the casa de cambio. 

A quick sort out and then we went met up with our fellow travellers accompanying us on the remainder of our trip through Colombia and we all went out for an enjoyable dinner at a place called Crepes and Waffles which is a franchise run by a Colombian couple and has great food at a reasonable price.