A Tale of Two Cities

Back to my 'Colombia 2012' blog

Villa de Leiva, Colombia
Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Villa de Leyva, Boyacá province
Tuesday, Jan 24

We're sitting inside a local cafe having figs stuffed with dulce de leche while the afternoon rain beats down on the town. A good chance to reflect on our first few days in Colombia.

My first blog was written during the first flight of our four-flight trip from Vancouver to here. What an itinerary! - far too much time spent sizing up different American airports. For those of you who delight in compiling "worst of" lists, let me nominate the Atlanta airport for Greatest Sterility In A Public Building. I've seen psych ward deprivation rooms with more visual stimulation than this! It seems the more I travel, the more I appreciate YVR. And, in a country that bring you (insert spooky sounds here) Socialized Medicine, one can find baggage carts and wifi freely available to those in need. I assure you, no right-thinking American airport undermines the Free Market in that dangerous way!

We landed in Bogotá Friday afternoon and spent some panicky and fruitless time trying to convince the local ATM machines to accept our Scotiabank or Vancity cards and spit out some pesos. Wasn't easy. Then a cab straight to the central bus depot, while a thunderstorm broke out around us and we sprinted though the downpour lugging our bags. But busses have changed since our last trip here. No longer some antiquated multi-coloured death trap stuffed to capacity, today they are modern bland-looking diesel buses stuffed to capacity. So from Bogotá we wound our way northward, into the green countryside sprinkled with cows and farms and cinder block houses. Northward and upward until, four hours later, we came to Colombia's highest (and coldest!) provincial capital - Tunja .

Tunja is a place with some reasons to visit. Founded in 1539, it still retains many of its colonial buildings. The grand homes of some of the early big shots are now museums; old churches and convents, restored and upgraded, stand at the original sites. (Lost, of course, is the indigenous Muisca town and temple that the Spanish demolished in order to build these fine civilizing structures.) Though Tunja is now a college town, the centre retains some of that old charm - our own hotel was an old colonial home a block from the main plaza. The term "old colonial home" may conjure up lovely images, but be sure to include squeaky wooden floors, doors that don't quite match their frames, retrofitted showers that barely make tepid water, and single paned windows on the overhanging balconies that act as no barrier to the modern street noise. However the central courtyard offered a nice place to sit, the gardenias on our balcony were in full bloom, and the señora who ran the place was dignified and efficient, overseeing a home that had been in her family for decades, if not centuries.
One strange thing about the hotel was the welter of Visa and MasterCard stickers on the door, with the addition of Diners Club and American Express signs in the enclosed restaurant. Strange because, as the señora made abundantly clear in her dignified and efficient manner, she expected cash. As we were to discover, she was not alone. Several of the restaurants we went to sported credit card displays on the outside only to refuse us time and again when we tried to use them inside. This was not merely mysterious and mildly amusing (are credit cards like cassette tapes and CDs a thing of the past?), it was also personally scary. We hadn't been wildly successful getting pesos at the airport, and they were running through our fingers like water.

But the truly strange thing about being in Tunja was that it satisfied some old travel fantasies in a very unsatisfying way. If I tell you we were in a typically Colombian town, not a tourist agency in sight trying to sell us packaged tours, surrounded by centuries of history and architecture and not a single other foreign traveller about, it might sound as if we had found the ultimate traveller's "authentic" experience. But it felt creepy - WHY are we the only foreigners here? When we went into the historic homes / museums, the bored staff member jumped at a chance to show us around, but having first to turn on the lights and unlock the galleries that led to the ancient coats of armour and the dining rooms with original 16th century furniture and the outlandish paintings on the ceiling. At each place we were urged to sign the guest book - offering us a glimpse at the confirming data: aside from the occasional German or Argentine family, nobody goes to Tunja.
Why? Well, the fact that it's really, really cold there might explain a lot. We hadn't packed a lot of clothes for this equatorial country, and believe me, we were wearing all of them. And after that one day of churches and museums, there wasn't a lot to do in Tunja except walk the chilly streets and watch the locals drinking beer.

But one day was all we had planned, and on Sunday we jammed ourselves and our bags into a local bus and headed for Villa de Leyva.
The ride was only about 45 minutes, but mostly downhill to a much warmer valley. Not a simple drive, this road twisted and turned around the hills, over gravel washouts and past sectors of roadway that had simply fallen away to the valleys below, and through it all our steadfast driver kept one hand firmly gripped upon the steering wheel and the other firmly gripped upon the cell phone. Rather impressive, actually, the way he could suspend his conversation to use the cell phone hand to shift gears. Then, past the obligatory police/army roadblocks, and we were there.

Villa de Leyva is one, of those places that time forgot. Founded in 1572 and only marginally economically significant through the 17th and 18th centuries, there was never reason to demolish and replace the old buildings and so today it is a 3-D snapshot of a Spanish colonial town from 400 years ago. This fact did not escape the notice of some local and national governments who declared the entire town a national monument in 1954 and, in addition to providing restoration money, imposed building restrictions that ensured that the whitewashed walls of single story, tiled-roof houses run from the central plaza all the way to the edges of town. And even beyond the town, to include the large faux 16th century houses built in the past few years to conceal the red-tiled car garages and private swimming pools of the wealthy of Bogotá or Munich. But it's a pretty town, with cobblestone streets to catch the eye and twist the ankle, and whose restored interiors proffer a wealth of fancy restaurants and tourist stores.

For if nobody goes to Tunja, everybody goes to Villa de Leyva. Again we walk amidst British backpackers, hip young Americans and aging Germans. But all of us foreigners are outnumbered by the sheer volume of wealthy Bogateños. As far as I can tell, this is the Colombian Disneyland of the upper class. They're buying the ice cream, they're renting the horses, they're idling in the cafes and they're certainly shopping in the stores. Or, at least, the locals are hoping they will. Sure, there are some objects aimed at the foreigner market - some ponchos, some native carvings at exorbitant markup - but the overwhelming volume of stuff are cute dresses, stylish handbags and outré jewelry for young Bogateñas with pesos dripping out of their purses.

To be fair, there are good reasons to come to VdL beyond the fact it's so gosh-darned cute. It, too, has it's share of museums and historical houses. But beyond that, the area is full of Jurassic and Cretaceous fossils, some of impressive size. Nearby are the ruins of a Muisca astronomical observatory, there are two monasteries that can be visited, a giant ostrich farm, a village that makes fine pottery, plus waterfalls and a sacred lake. And all that brings the crowds.

Actually, that's the real reason we found ourselves shivering in the empty museums of Tunja. Since we were arriving on a weekend, we already knew that VdL would be packed to hotel capacity with the weekend get-out-of-town crowd from the capital. So we held back, spending our first nights in an "authentic" old Colombian town until the weekend ended and we could, like any good Colombian, get out of there to go to the inauthentic and pretend we had time travelled 400 years. But with ice cream.

OK. The pounding rain has passed. The figs with dulce de leche have been consumed. Life is short and we have eaten desert first. Time to go seek out one of Villa de Leyva's overpriced restaurants. I'll write again.

Ruth wishes you well.

Avi

Comments

Sounds wonderful. Well, mostly wonderful. Another adventure. Love reading about it. From Keren Freed, on Jan 25, 2012 at 05:38AM
I love reading about your adventures. You make the towns come to life. It is nice to know that adventures are possible all over the world. enjoy it all and I hope you are getting your pesos now. From Elaine F., on Jan 25, 2012 at 04:23PM
Hey Aviruthia! As usual, you draw me right in to your 'interesting' adventures. Feel like I'm right there while reading - wish I was! From C. Row, on Jan 25, 2012 at 10:08PM
Avi, thanks for your insights. I hope we get to meet in Colombia. From Leandre, on Jan 28, 2012 at 09:08PM
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