Villa de Leyva
(Villa de Leyva Photos)

Our base for exploring the area was Ejuenia's comfortable, rustic country house, located 5km outside of Villa Leyva. Hot water options were limited, and so I chose to shower outside, which always made for a bracing start to the day. The area was very peaceful and had some wonderful fews across the valley and of the surrounding hills. The house also sits near the Iguaque national park. So the hiking and biking options are numerous. And then of course you have the very charming town of Villa de Leyva...


Being only a few hours from Bogotá makes Villa de Leyva a popular weekend retreat for city dwellers. This sunny warm Saturday was no exception. Though, it was not as mobbed as it could have been. After having lunch we explored its narrow very rough cobble stone streets, all the time competing with the traffic. In most other parts of the world cars would be prohibited from entering the centre of a historic town like this.


Its main square, the Plaza Mayor, is large and impressive, and covered with the same unevenly sized cobble stones. The town's strict building regulations have meant that the town centre has changed little in appearance in several hundred years. It is also known for having a large artist population and this can be seen by the many boutique shops selling all manner of handmade goods. Then there are also plenty of trendy little restaurants, cafes and cake shops that cater for the sophisticated tastes of the Bogotanos that visit. Several houses have been converted into mini arcades and these shops and eateries have made good use of their internal patios and maze like passages.


I cannot forget to mention our visit to the colourful Saturday market held at Plaza de Mercados. This is tipical feature of small town life in Colombia. Local famers, assisted by the whole family (who are often to be seen sleeping under the stalls) bring their produce to market by mule, bus, car or truck. Need less to say Eujenia and Ligia stocked up here to. I was eating mangoes for a week, not that there is anything bad about that!


That night we checked out the local movie theatre and I got my first taste of Colombian cinema. This must be one of the only towns of its size to have a cinema. Looking at the building where it was supposed to be I could not figure out how they fitted one in. As it turned out it was more of a home theatre then full blown cinema. The room was located on the upper floor of one of these mini-arcades just off of the Plaza Mayor. It had four rows of leather "executive" desk chairs, eight chairs per row, with each row raised slightly than the one in front. The chairs tilted back as you would expect. At the front, to the right of the screen was a popcorn machine. Hung from the ceiling was a compact digital projector and to the left of the screen was the "entertainment centre". To top it off there was even waitress service.

The film, its name escapes me (it had 'sueños' - dreams in its title), was about an army platoon of Colombia's counter guerrilla forces that comes across tens of millions of dollars hidden in the jungle by the guerrillas. What do they do with the cash? Well, I don't want to spoil the plot, but it is based on a true story. Local critics often lament that Colombian cinema is all to often based on themes relating to the countries troubles - drugs, guerrillas, paramilitaries, kidnapings.

We did not spend the whole time hanging around town. Though, its very relaxed atmosphere, in spite of the tourists, would have made this very easy to do. One afternoon we visited the Convento de Santo Ecce Homo, a beautifully preserved monastery not far out of town. It's notable feature is how locally found fossils have been worked into the construction. The area is well known for the quantities of fossils that can be found. There is even a sight near the convento called "El Fossil".


There is also the Parque Nacional Iguaque, into which we made a small incursion. I could imagine spending days exploring its hills and canyons.


On our last night we visited a cousin of Ligia's (she has quite a family - her brother was the engineer behind many of the highways in Colombia and her nephew was the first Colombian to climb Everest), Fred Andrade, a reasonably well known Colombian artist and his wife who have built a spectacular pair of houses (one they rent out for weekends) on a hill overlooking the town. Their bathroom has a window made of green glass bottles, a large skylight (no neighbors) and a small flower bed. I wish there had been enough light to have taken a photo or two!

As we made our last pass through Villa de Leyva to stock up on some of the local specialties, we had the good fortune to find that some filming was taking place in the Plaza Mayor. The setting was the Spanish colonial period, and an elaberate market scene had been created in one corner of the plaza. The Spanish flag was flying from the baloney of a building. We learned that the filming was for a "telenovela", as the very popular Latin American soap operas aknown, called "El Zorro". Something should have clicked when I saw some crew members putting up a poster showing a familiar looking a masked man with the text "ENEMIGO PUBLICO" above it.