Villa de Leyva

This is Villa de Lleyva, yet another stop at a laid back colonial town on our way to Bogota. Unlike Barichara, Villa de Lleyva was loud. . . . in part thanks to its celebration of the town's patron saint day. This involved a massive party on the town square that involved lots of loud music and drinking untill the wee hours of the morning. Fireworks went off all night long. At one point, a parade of horn blowing cars and trucks road through town.... the folks seemed to go to allot of trouble to out do each others horn blowing. Many cars and trucks were rigged up with fog horns especially for the occassion. This went on for quite a while.... fortunately one of the benefits of colonioal architecture is very thick walls. Lisa and I both had no trouble sleeping. While it didn't rain much, the weather cloudy and noticibly colder almost the entire time we were there. I put on long pants and a jacket for the first time this trip.


Hiking out in the countryside.... as always, beautiful:





Our hostel.... we really liked this place:





This dog befriended us and followed us far up into the mountains. He was with us for several hours before wandering off somewhere.... Í'm generally wary of stray dogs down here, but this one was friendly:
High up in mountains overlooking Villa de Lleyva:








Moving on to Bogota....

Barichara

We finally left the coast for cooler temperatures up in the mountains.... way up high in the Andes. The picture above allmost looks like it could have been taken from an airplane, but it was out of the window of a bus we were on. The mountains in this part of the world are huge. The scenery in this part of the country is amazing. Our first stop in the mountains was Barichara.... one of the mellowist places I've ever been in my life. Barichara is a picture perfect colonial mountain village. Not very much ever really happens here. It is incredibly quiet.... a good place for sleeping. Everywhere we went in the village, freindly locals inquired as to where we were from an then reccomended various hikes. They all seemed quite proud of their little town. More than one local informed us that Barichara was the best place in all of Colombia.... "When tourists come here, nothing ever happens to them, thanks to God." I thought that was funny.




Barichara is built on the side of a hill. At the top is a nice little park with a look out....




The view down every street in town looked pretty much like this:





Celebrating Barichara's patron saint
During our second day in Barichara Lisa and I hiked a portion of El Camino Real, an ancient stone paved road that was originally built by indegenous people long before the arrival of the Spanish. It has been rebuilt several times since.... the hike was awesome.... amazing countryside!

After a few hours, the trail deposited us right into Guane, a little village of less than one thousand people. Guane was even sleepier than Barichara

Off to Villa de Lleyva....