Villa de Leyva; Ponds, Fossils, and a Little Hell

We start our tour today with a visit to Pozos Azules (Blue Wells); these are
artificial ponds created decades ago for farming and colored an intense blue-green by minerals. They are beautiful and used to be used for swimming by locsls, but that is no longer permitted. We enjoy a walk around them.

Villa de Leyva has a strong fossil heritage, as it was under the ocean originally; fossilised marine life was pushed to the surface when the Andes were formed. We visit the Museo el Fosil, the Community Fossil Museum, which was essentially built around a large fossil (a 7 metres long Kronosaurus boyacensis) found in the fields around Villa de Leyva. We also visit the Paleontological Research Centre (CIP) opposite it; this is a private, non-profit scientific and educational research centre featuring one of Latin America's most advanced vertebrate-fossil preparation laboratories We have a guided tour by one of the staff there.

We then visit El Infiernito; this is a pre-Columbian Muisca archaeoastronomical and fertility site 5km from Villa de Leyva. Spanish conquistadors and missionaries named it El Infiernito ("The Little Hell") because they considered the indigenous pagan rituals, etc, to be diabolical. There are also penis-like structures that stand for fertility. The Muisca people used the positioning of the monoliths to plan harvests and planting times; it is very much the Colombian version of Stonehenge. We can only take photos from the outside, as the site was closed today.

Nite that the Muisca are to Colombia, what the Aztecs are to Mexico, and the Inca are to Peru.

We then drive the short distance back to Villa de Leyva.Read more