White is the Old Black

Villa de Leyva - I tell you the mayor or Bogota would approve

Not a tag, broken window or underpass in sight! Just uniform white buildings with black - or daringly dark green - trimmings with terra-cotta roofs. 

It’s all terribly pretty and trim and prim and uniform and well kept and white and....  .... .... ..... 

Oh, sorry! I think I nodded off there.

To give Villa de Leyva credit, it IS terribly pretty! An exceptionally well preserved colonial town founded in 1572, with well-preserved buildings and cobble stoned streets peppered with prehistoric fossils for variety. 

The town is about 3 hours drive North of Bogota through winding and nausea inducing mountain roads.

Villa de Leyva also has the biggest main square, Plaza Mayor, in Colombia and arguably all of South America. At 14.000 square meters it’s no puny effort.

I’ve been staying at a family accommodation here and boy, did that ever work out for me! Since I’ve been struck with a flu bug from god knows where (possibly flight AF 133 Paris-Bogota). This has left me feeling especially vulnereable and decrepid these past two days. Being sick on the road is most definitely no fun - especially when travelling solo. So to actually be in a family who have looked after me, plied me with chicken soup, freshly baked cakes and fresh fruit juices and made me cups of cinnomon and ginger infusion really feels lovely! (In fact, I kid you not, as I am posting this from my room, a knock on the door preceded my host with a mug of ginger and orange tea. Maybe I’ll never leave!)

So my sightseeing here in Villa de Leyva has been in mini-sized, aesthetically pleasing bonsai portions, rationed for the faint of breath and weak at knee. I’ve made quick dashes from the cafeteria to the lunch place and back. But hey, that’s one way to see a city. Or maybe more accurately a large village.

With its huge main square

Colonial parks

and private gardens

The main difference between public squares and private gardens being that the squares inevitably have a statue of a hero of the revolution in the middle. Always.

However, spending more time than usually at my digs has enabled me to follow the everyday life of the family I’m staying with. There are four generations under one roof, the 4-year old Mathias lording over grandmother and great grandmother alike - all fathers seem absent as do the parents of Mathias. Possibly they work up in town during the week and only come down for the weekend. 

Mornings I watch a little TV with Mathias as I eat breakfast. Watching children’s programmes in Spanish is very empowering, as for once I understand practically everything. (Let’s put the green olive on the red plate!)

After the matron of the house, the roughly sixty-year-old Senora Maura, returns from work (she’s a nurse at the local hospital), she prepares dinner for the family with her mother. Then they start to call up numerous relatives, children, grandchildren, brothers etc via video chat. The closeness and importance of the extended family circle cannot be mistaken. The doorbell also rings frequently as neighbours and friends drop by for a short chat. Since the advent of mobile phones, nobody seems to drop by any more in Finland, which is rather a shame. 

After this it’s pretty much time for lights out by 9 p.m. This schedule actually works for me too, since even before I got the flu, my inner clock seems to have adjusted to this time zone with an astonishingly early sleeping cycle - very untypically for me!

Yesterday I got fed up with being off colour and having a fever for days and checked in at the local hospital to see if I had bronchitis or something exotic. After consultation by two different doctors who did their very best to find something (apart from the fever and a slight hacking cough) wrong with me, I was pronouced clinically healthy! Then a jab of vitamins-or-whatnot on the buttock, some tablets to take home and the total payment of 3800 pesos - just over 1 euro - for the full treatment. I’m glad some countries seem to be able to afford public healthcare!