Villa de Leyva

After our underground adventures we're back at the surface and drove to the nearby town Villa de Leyva. The roads are surprisingly good here, expect a few places where craters in the road create a little grid lock!

Villa de Leyva is an old colonial town that has been declared national monument in 1954, thus kept all its cobblestone streets and whitewashed buildings. Walking through the town, slowly as cobblestones are perfect for ankle twisting, we notice that this is more of a tourist town than Zipaquirá, although mainly for Colombians. We saw more tat shops and people hawking you to go in the restaurants, but the atmosphere is still calm and friendly (and cold) and it is nice to wonder around the streets. The town is centered on the plaza major (litteraly the main square) which is very big and mostly pedestrian which is nice. This is apparently one of the largest town squares in South America, 120m by 120m. For a few days every year, this square is used exclusively for an international (apparently) Kite competition. When checking in to our hotel we learnt that this was happening while we are in town, a very pleasant nice surprise!

Our first day in town is Friday so no kite competition today. We took the opportunity to see the local attractions starting with a house of clay. Yes, a two story, three bedroom real house of clay! This was created by the artist Octavio Mendoza Morales as a house to live in and receive guests. Very soon he realised that due to its uniqueness more and more people were coming to admire the house and he had to move out. This is a funny little place, full of well thought out artistic pieces. The way it was constructed was the most intriguing as he had to put part of the house on fire for 30days to cook the clay! It could have been a good construction for the three little pigs 😄.

Next on the agenda are two small museums showing some fossils found nearby. If you were attentively reading the last post, you won't be surprised that dinausores bones were discovered here, and more particularly, sea dinausores! We saw a 120 million-year-old baby kronosaurus, the most complete specimen in the world. This "baby" was only 12m long (although the fossil is only 7 long as the tail disappeared) with a 2m meter head. On our way back to the hotel we stopped to do a little walk to see some green lakes. Not that impressive but nice walk in the countryside.

Next day is kite day! Competition starts with the craft kite children category at 9:30am. To our surprise, when we arrive on the main square at 10:30 they are just starting! It's cute to see little ones run across the square to get their kite in the air, and a bit heartbreaking when the wind is not strong enough to keep them in the sky! Through out the day we saw various categories of competition, from homemade kites, commercial kites, big massive kites, kites with tails, 3d kites, artistic kite dancing and group kites. Unfortunately it all ended by a big rain storm coming from the ominous clouds that you can see on the pictures!
Overall we saw a lot of kites, but it was so great to experience a genuine Colombian tradition kept alive by local people with a passion.Read more