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| The huge (and empty!) Plaza Mayor in Villa de Leyva |
Wednesday night: It sounds as if the
City Musicians of Bremen are being staged outside. Dogs have howled
for the last half hour or so, and now they are being joined by a
mixed-up rooster. So far I can hear neither cats nor donkey to
complete the choir.
Not only has Villa de Leyva redeemed
itself, we also realized this morning how easily we could have gotten
to our hotel if it hadn't been for Booking.com and later Googlemaps:
all we would have had to do is walk about 750m in a straight line
from the plaza. We did so in reverse after a good breakfast and first looked for the
tourist information to find out what hikes we could take in the area.
We were told that the one we had hoped to do, a two-kilometre walk to
two waterfalls, has been permanently closed; that would have been the
one that would have led most directly into nature. Most of the others would
require taking the bus or a taxi for a bit, which we had hoped to
avoid today. There were a couple of other, longer hikes with the
option of taking bus or taxi one way, and we decided to walk in the
direction of the palaeontological museum and the Muisca observatory.
We soon left the town behind and
followed the map from the tourist office, intending to take the
somewhat shorter route that avoided the main road and led by the
'Casa Terracotta' (clay house), an interesting modern construction, but
likely not worth paying money for looking at from the inside,
according to the man at the tourist information centre. We took the
most likely looking turnoff from the main road onto a dusty one and
followed it for maybe half a kilometre, but we still weren't sure if
it was the right one so decided to ask two men by the side of the
road. To our surprise we got a reply in perfect German: one of the
men was from Austria, working on a retirement building project, and
had heard us converse. We talked for a while, found out that we had
turned off a few metres too late and returned to the main road, where
we quickly found the right one.
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| Casa terracotta from afar (as close as we got) |
We followed the dusty, winding road,
from time to time moving to the side to let cars or motorcycles pass,
and were amazed at the many new, beautiful houses (all in colonial
style with red tile roofs) that lined it. Even more empty lots were
still for sale. Some lots were obviously intended to be developed but
so far contained no more than a stone wall or a shack, for instance, others looked
like storage spaces for a building centre, the most prominent feature
huge rocks, the building material of choice in this arid area. It
became clear how popular Villa de Leyva and its surroundings are, and how much more it will
likely expand still. The Austrian had told us that this was probably
the safest place in all Colombia: not only is there no worry at all
to walk anywhere, day or night, there is also no problem with theft. He
said he had left building materials stacked for a long time, and
nobody had taken anything. In Cartagena, he said, you couldn't have
left it for three hours before it would have been gone. “The
Kitzbühel of Colombia”,
he called Villa de Leyva.
By the time we
reached the Sol Muisca, the interpretative site that explains about
the Muisca culture, it was quite warm, and we were happy to sit in
the shade for a while before taking the offered tour.
A tall, middle aged woman
extended a friendly welcome. The tour would take about 45 minutes,
and she could do it in English, Natalia explained – great. Tours
like these, where so much relies on auditory information, would be
worth little to us in Spanish, unless we had an interpreter with us.
Natalia told us that we
were standing on ancestral land of the Muisca people which had
inhabited large parts of central Colombia before being completely
wiped out within a few years by the Spanish, who arrived in 1537. The
Muisca counted about 1.2 million people and were an agricultural,
peaceful people not out to conquer, using weapons only to defend
themselves. The main religious centre was at Sogamoso – Valley of
the Sun – about 80km east of Tunja. The Muisca considered this
lake, Colombia's largest, to be the birthplace of their people. A
woman and a child – not her own child – emerged from the lake.
The woman raised the child, which later became her husband, and
together they had many children who became the Muisca people. These
people were well versed in astronomy: right across the road from the
interpretive centre monoliths and other stones have been found that,
it is assumed, were used as sun dials to determine solstices and
equinoxes and thus the right time for seeding and harvest. Muiscas
from far and wide would gather here on these occasions to celebrate
these events with ceremonies, music, dance and drinking chicha (a
fermented drink made from corn). The Spanish, considering these to be
pagan rituals, called the place 'El Infiernito' (Little Hell) and
destroyed it.
The
Muisca traded widely with other peoples, including with the Inca
further south and central American people, using salt and gold to
trade for cotton, shells, seeds, macaw feathers and much more. They
were talented weavers, but had to import the cotton because the
climate is not suitable for growing it here. Theirs was a matriarchal
society, and women were the head of the family. Houses were
considered to be the womb of the family, the roof beams the ribs,
which were covered with grass. It was a sacred space and was entered
backwards, which symbolized that any worries would be left outside. A
nice idea!
We
thanked Natalia for her excellent tour and found out that this
project was started eight years ago by her husband because he was
passionate about making more about the Muiscas known. It is
maintained only by the two of them: an admirable initiative. They
live on site, and with the 12,000 COP per person for a tour they are
certainly not getting rich.
We
crossed the road to the archaeological site, but decided not to pay
the entrance fee to look at it more closely. We could see the
monoliths and sun dial through the fence, and felt we had taken in
enough information for a day.
The
way back, as so often, seemed shorter than the way there, but
nonetheless we were glad to be back at our hotel for a long siesta
before heading into town for supper. It's dark by six, and of course
there is no sign of things slowing down just because it is dark. We
managed to buy a prepaid phone card for Johann's phone, which will
give us internet and the possibility to call (unlikely as it is in
Spanish) even when we don't have wifi. The experience after our
arrival in Villa de Leyva was just one more reminder that it might be
a good idea, and at 23,000 COP ($9 Can) for the chip and unlimited
calling and texting, plus 2 GB of data, for 15 days is very
reasonable indeed.
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