Bogota, Colombia, South America

I had an awesome day in Villa de Leyva today! I had a great night’s sleep at Hotel El Solar, I got up early and had a good breakfast at a little cafe in town, and then went to the bike shop. I met Francisco, the owner of Ciclo Trips, and luckily he spoke english perfectly. He explained to me the best route for me to take the bike for a route that takes 3-4 hours. He was very well prepared with a map on which he could draw out my route, and pictures on his computer of certain landmarks along the way. It worked out perfectly and I managed not to get lost, which was a major bonus. Justin and Elizabeth had done the same route yesterday, but said they got a little turned around at one point, so they missed some stuff.

The first place I made it to was the Pozos Azules (Blue Pools). it is a collection of five pools that are incredibly clear and have a great turquoise-blue color to them. The color really stands out among the warm desert surroundings, so that was pretty cool. I rode my bike around the five pools, which proved harder than I expected. I think the trails were made for walking, not bike riding. Oh well. It was really nice riding around down there, and then it was incredibly hard getting out of there. It was just a dirt road going down to the pools, and I hadn’t realized how steep it was until I had to go up. Ugh! It was tough going. Luckily, when I get back to the top, it was a nice long downhill ride on the pavement to get to my next stop, which was the Fossil Museum.

Apparently, millions of years ago, VDL used to be under water before the Andes Mountains formed. They’ve found a number of almost complete fossilized dinosaur remains in VDL, and have put together a museum to show them off. It was pretty interesting, and some of these aquatic dinosaurs were absolutely massive. It was like a low budget Museum of Natural History. It didn’t take long to go through the museum, maybe 15 minutes, and then I was back on the road again. This was when I started to notice that every time I hit a bump, the seat would get knocked down to the base. That was pretty annoying. I had to keep stopping to adjust it, otherwise I was going to knock myself out with a knee to the face.

I got to the next stop which is called El Infiernito. It is like the Colombian version of Stonehenge. There are all these stones, most of which are phallic shaped, and they are organized in some manor, that no one knows the reason for. It was a bit disappointing because they didn’t have any information in English, so I just had to walk around and look at a bunch of penis shaped rocks. I hung around here for about 15 minutes as well and then got back on the bike. This road was a long, windy, hilly, dirt road that brought me back to the Casa Terracotta that I saw yesterday.
I wasn’t going to stop there again, but I was pretty hot and tired from the bike road so I thought it would be a good place to take a rest. I’m glad I stopped because as I arrived, I saw some people coming out of the house. I asked if I could go in, and they said it was a 7,000 peso fee (£2). It was well worth the cost of admission! The house was really cool, with all these little rooms covered in tiles, an awesome roof top that you could walk around, and an amazing back-deck-kind-of-thing.

I finished up there and took the bike back into town. It took about 3.5 hours for the whole tour, and Francisco charged me for three hours because of the problem with the seat. I was very impressed with the service there, so I’ll be recommending Ciclo Trips to anyone I know going to VDL. I stopped at the bus station on the way back to my hotel to see the bus schedule and there was a direct bus leaving in 15 minutes, or in 3 hours and 15 minutes. I decided to hurry up and get the one at 2pm instead of waiting around.

I got a big bottle of water, which I needed desperately after the ride, and then got the bus. It was not as nice as the big bus I got from Bogota to Tunja, but it was still pretty nice, and it was direct. Even though it was “direct”, we stopped a bunch of times on the way to pick people up who were heading to Bogota. They weren’t going to let a seat go to waste. We got back to Bogota at 5pm and I got the Transmilenio back to Calle 57 to get back to Colombia at Home. It really does feel like home now after being here for a couple of weeks. The people are so nice as well. I’ll be recommending this place to anyone coming to Bogota, for sure.

I was hoping to see Magda today as it is her birthday and she said she might be having a party. It turns out that she decided to have it tomorrow night instead because more people can make it on a Friday, so I have the night to myself. It worked out pretty well though because the Patriots first pre-season game was on, so I got to watch that from here. I’m so excited for football season to start! As much as I hate preseason, I’ll take anything!