Villa de Leyva, Colombia
Yesterday, we left our hotel in Cali fairly early in the morning, for the drive to the Cali airport (a fair distance outside the city, especially during morning rush hour). We had a short flight to Bogota, where we were to be met by a small bus that was to take us to the town of Villa de Leyva. Apparently, due to hitting a couple of rocks on the way to Bogota, it was delayed and we were eventually loaded onto a temporary replacement. That bus took us to the outskirts of Bogota, where we had lunch and transferred ourselves and all our luggage into our now-repaired, originally scheduled vehicle.
Once we were safely on our way again, we made good time on a smooth highway until the skies opened and the torrential rains began. The bus did not have a working defogger for the front window and the driver struggled to keep it clear with a towel - we were not making good time any more!
Eventually we left the main road and made our way towards our destinalton via a smaller, twisty but nicely paved road, until we were stopped by a mud-slide. There was no way we could continue on that route but fortunately our bus was small enough to get turned around, unlike the big rigs that were stopped in front of us.
We successfully completed our journey by taking a detour through some nameless small town, then via a couple of more circuitous roads, arriving around 7:00PM. The rain did not let up until we started our evening orientation walk around the town, which was really very considerate of the rain gods.
This is a very nice colonial town, with a huge number of restaurants, coffee shops, ice cream shops and adventure travel outlets. This is where a lot of citizens of Bogota come on the weekends but fortunately for us, this is not a weekend and the town is quite a peaceful break after the big city of Cali. We are assured that this is a very dry area that rarely sees any rain at all - the locals are ecstatic!
This morning, while some of our group chose to take a challenging hike up a scenic canyon nearby, Sue and I decided to spend the day taking a more relaxed view of the town. We did a short, very pleasant hike to the very touristy Casa Terracota (probably the biggest piece of pottery in the world) and took in one artistic museum. Just after noon, the rains returned and after braving the elements for a while, hustling from shop to shop, we took refuge back at the hotel - thus this lengthy post.
Tomorrow, we will be off again, to who knows what adventure.
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