June 12, 2018 – June 14, 2018
Villa de Leyva is a beautiful colonial town near to the city of Bogota. Its 400 plus year old streets are lined with tourist shops selling ponchos and leather bags. There are lots of restaurants to chose from, and it has the largest plaza in Colombia (14,000 square metres). We loved it.
Derek in Plaza Mayor.
The church and kids playing with the doves.
We headed out for some site seeing and some pizza, and then the next morning we decided to hike up the hill behind the town. We knew that a trail lead to a spot where there was a statue of Jesus, and hopefully some nice views of the surrounding hills and valley. The trail going up was decent; red clay in places, rubble or small stones in other places. We made it to the statue and looked down on our camper tucked nicely into the fenced yard of the hostel we were camping at. Then we turned and looked towards the top of the hill….seemed like we were maybe half way up, and yes, there was a trail heading from the lookout towards the top. We decided to push on.
Looking down on the town of Villa de Leyva.
The trail began to braid into many “trail-ettes”. We would chose what looked like the best option, and we kept pushing higher. Sometimes the trail would end, so we would climb until we found another one. We were keeping an eye on the dark clouds that were forming behind the hill.
We climbed up and over a crest, believing we were about to summit, only to see another long climb ahead of us. The vegetation on the hill started to become taller and thicker – exotic high altitude plants. When the plants closed in around us, we decided that it was going to be too difficult to try and reach the top, and the clouds were getting thicker as well, so we turned around, at an elevation of about 9,100 feet.
The vegetation was beautiful….so exotic.
Piper enjoying a good hike.
We started down, ended up off trail, found another trail, and just as we were making our way to the Jesus statue, it started to rain. The clay that on the way up seemed so sticky was now slick with rain, so we really had to take our time descending. But we made it back to the camper with no one falling, glad that we had decided to turn around when we did.
That night, instead of heading out to a restaurant, we decided to have a BBQ. The hostel had a nice fire pit and a pile of wood and it had been ages since we had cooked over a fire. We walked around town, found some nice bread at the bakery and some veggies from a market stand, and then told a butcher that we wanted some meat for an “asada” (BBQ). He recommended a chunk of beef and cut us off a huge steak. We were very excited.
The meal was cooked entirely over the fire. Steak, potatoes, roasted veggies and a salad. Back at the camper we dug in. I popped a big bite of steak into my mouth, and chewed….and chewed….it tasted good…and chewed ..oh, how we miss Alberta beef!