Transportation has been an adventure every step of the way. As soon as we think we understand what we're agreeing to... we should immediately anticipate that our expectations are wrong. Whether it's catching a taxi to a bus terminal and having him leave us at a random intersection explaining that it's better to go to a different city and transfer buses (right...), or catching a direct bus and stopping constantly all seven hours of the ride, or constantly questioning and bartering with taxi drivers and becoming synical of any price they initially tell you. So why would our ride from Bogota to Villa de Leyva be any different?:) We anticipated a mellow 3 to 4 hour bus ride direct to Villa... but we ended up in what was essentially a colletivo (a smaller bus that takes a round-about way and makes a lot of stops to continue to gather people). Seriously. Ridiculous. I'm hoping that our driver is the worst driver in Colombia, too... otherwise it could get worse...:) But we made it alive after a long, cold, wet busride through curvy, swirvey andean highways. We arrived after the sunset, so it was fun to wake up this morning.
Villa de Leyva is a small colonial town set in the Colombian mountainside. The streets are stone roads (walking is more like stone-hopping so you don't trip), the buildings are all white-washed, and the pace of life is nice and sloooooow. I had envisioned Villa is be like Baños in Ecuador. The pace of life is not all that different but the colonial feel certainly makes for a different world. And I like it. We'll likely venture out on horseback this afternoon to check out some local sites. This area is known for its fossils.
And our time in Bogota was brief. I think we could have spent a lot more time there. The green of the hillside in Colombia is totally different than it was in Ecuador. Being in Bogota felt more tropical (although we still haven't hit really warm temperatures - I packed way too many tanktops) and all the flowers were lovely. We had some funny and randominteractions with people, including some police who approached us, asked how long we had been there and if we had heard anything about the history of Plaza Bolivar (the main plaza in the historic center) and proceded to tell us the history of each building. It was a really funny little tour. They were about 18 or 19 years old. The police presence in Colombia is significantly more than in Ecuador (although I haven't felt unsafe once this entire trip)... and after our first Colombian police interaction, it's so hard to take them seriously. One Bogota tradition I could quickly get used to is ordering hot chocolate and then immediately dropping a piece of white cheese into it - quite tasty as the cheese completely melts into gooey, cheesy perfection. There certainly is great joy in journeying from place to place... but it sure does make the imagination run as I speculate what it would be like to live in Bogota... or any other city we've traveled through.
Well... it's time to get serious about the idea of the horseback riding. ¡Hasta!
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