Villa de Leyva, Columbia

Villa de Leyva is a very small town a few hours north of Bogota. It has a very white washed look with red tile roofing, balconies and overhangs framed in dark wood. Colonial, they call it. The churches are not ornate, not even inside, and they tend to be that square steeple Spanish style, hardly exciting after the cathedrals of Europe. Nonetheless, this is a charming little town, especially when the clouds start to pile up and the afternoon sun bathes everything in golden light. There are a couple major roads that are paved but many are of cobblestone, large, uneven and a challenge to negotiate. What fascinates me is that there are very visible fossils in a number of those stones and potsherds of indeterminate origin scattered among them.

Saturday Market

Check out the feathered pets

My hostel was the funkiest yet most unique I’ve ever inhabited. It shows its age and I certainly don t object to that. The owner, a woman who greets everyone with great affection, has it decorated in the most interesting art I’ve seen, from pencil drawings to posters, to odd things such as antique steam irons, along with the cable spool chair, vapors couch and the antique chair with the peg leg. The roof overhang is extended with plastic that leaks badly in a hard rain. Three makeshift bathrooms, toilet only, are sort of roughed in with rounded slabs from a lumber yard and bamboo. There is one sink on the wall outside and one room is opened up daily for all to share the shower. This place is so eclectic I couldn’t help but fall in love, especially with the large green yard that unfortunately filled with campers on the weekend. The owner offered to move my friend and I to a room in her brand new hotel but we both couldn’t bring ourselves to leave.

One must get away from the square to eat like a local so for every meal we take a different route and choose a hole in the wall to dine in. I’ve had three different kinds of cream soup, chicken, beef and catfish. They all are thick with a base that is distinctly bean, each a meal in itself. One night I had arepes, a thick tortilla with choriso sausage for Dave and for me, mushrooms, beef and cheese. The locals snickered a little because it is to be eaten by lifting the little plate, sliding it just enough off to chew on but I tried to eat it like a well-buttered pizza. I am particularly fond of the drinks, especially lulo juice, as well as those I can’t pronounce.

The side trip was to El Fosil not too far out of Villa de Leyva. Their major attraction is a Pliosaurus from the Cretaceous Period. It is displayed in a bed of sand, an organized skeleton of fossilized bones, much the way it was excavated. They also had many ammonites, those coil looking fossils, concretions split to reveal fern fossils, petrified wood and quartz crystals. I had a little side trip of my own taking a short hike up the road, checking out the ditch. It was quite the little geology adventure that ended with a cone of raisin ice cream back at the museum.

My last day I spotted this old homestead behind the bus station