Villa de Leyva

We met a Colombian school teacher in our hostel who was writing a book on the Muisca civilization, the natives of Colombia before the European invasion. He told us that there is a site just outside of town where the Muiscas had planted some rocks in the ground (something in the same vein as stone henge) that would line up perfectly with the sunrise durring the equinox. As luck would have it the equinox was the very next day, so plans were made to wake up at 4:30 the next day to go to this site and witness this extra-ordinary bianual event.

I always hate having to get up before the sun rise, and this time was no different. We had left the hostel by 5, and we walked for about one hour to the site. When we arrived, the place was closed, and did not open until 9 o'clock. Entirely unacceptable! How could they commit such a crime to close this site at the one time when that makes it special? We were having none of it, and so went searching for a place to climb over the barb wire fence.

Once all nine of us had climbed over, we finally got a good look at the set up of the stones. The sun had not come out yet, but it seemed like full day light. Comparing it to stone henge would be rather unfair to the British monument, because, quite frankly, this was unimpressive. It was litterally just a bunch of rocks in the ground, but we sat and waited for the sun to rise. When it finally did is when the rock formations transformed as they were perfectly in line with the sun. What an exquisite sight it was.

The rest of the day was spent sitting around the town square sipping fresh fruit juices. Colombia is apparently the country with the biggest selection of fruit grown within the country, so they are all extremely tastey. On top of that, Villa de Leyva was considerably warmer than Bogota, which means we were all in shorts again. Hooray!

The town was being used for the filming of a TV mini-series based on the story of Zorro, so they had repainted part of the town square to make it look older. They had also set up a fake market as a set for one of the scenes. It was fun to watch everyone in period costume walking around town. Frankly, I could have spent days just sitting in the square drinking juice and watching things happen. The atmosphere was very enjoyable.

Despite that, the next day we went out on a hike to see some waterfalls where we got caught in the rain without raincoats. The weather was so beautiful when we left that no one even thought it could ever rain. So we all ended up getting really wet, but it was still pretty hot, so it just ended up being rather fun.

In the afternoon, we caught a bus over to San Gil where we would experience some adventure sports.