Chula Cholula: Colombia Travel Report 2: Villa de Leyva

So, here comes the second report about my travel in Colombia. After I had recovered at least a bit from my horrible flu in Bogotá, I caught the bus to Villa de Leyva.

The hostel where I finally could put up a tent and spend some tranquil days.

The trip to this beautiful town could have been nice, in pretty landscapes and not doing anything. Well erm.. My seatmate, funnily enough also named Fabian, ran off at the mouth. He asked me things like if I liked Hitler, if I was into war and weapons, if my grandparents were nazis, etc. To make me feel even more uncomfortable, he turned out to be Jewish. Hmm, ok... Not exactly the kind of conversation I needed in that moment, still suffering from high fever...

He then tried to convince me that the whole world was terrible and that he surely felt that in one and a half year Third World War would begin. He then managed to smoothly go off on a tangent and suddenly talked about how we all were controlled by Martians who spanned a web of satellites all over the planet.

At the same time, he managed to put in every sentence some random information about hallucinogenic plants, mushrooms, drugs, etc. According to him, we have lots of this stuff here in Mexico, but sadly I had to disappoint him, admitting that not only didn't I have any experience in trying them, but that I actually didn't know even one of these plants (well, apart from the poisined food which also made me feel being in another world - not too recommendable, by the way...).

Due to all the serpentines on the road and my somewhat exhausting seatmate, my fever and headache quickly worsened and I felt so sick I just wanted to vomit. I closed my eyes and told him that I really could not listen any longer if he placed value on having clean clothes. He was deadly disappointed after having such a nice and entertaining conversation with me (aha), but luckily he turned around and annoyed some poor ladies behind him...

Typical architecture in that part of Colombia.

Finally arriving in Villa de Leyva, I found out that there was not only a long weekend, but exactly that weekend there would also take place the Fiesta de las Luces (Light Festival) with two nights full of fireworks. Guess what - no free rooms. Nowhere. Honestly - I asked in hotels I probably could not even have afforded, but no - from the ugliest and dirtiest place up to the high class hotels: Villa de Leyva was fully booked.

Let's just pretend I also contributed something useful for setting up the tent and did not just stand by.

I was about to leave again, but then, after whimpering around a bit in front of the receptionist of one of the nicer yet economical places, she proposed to put me up a tent. Hell yeah - long time since I went camping. The two super-cute little daughters helped me to set up everything and so I spent some nice and relaxing nights next to a peaceful stream and banana trees (with 2 sleeping mats and 3 blankets - not so warm over there).

Oh and the festival? Nice, but nothing different (only longer) than what you would know from other professional fireworks. Well, and looots of ash fell down the air, right into the eyes of the spectators. Not so funny. But then again, Colombians showed to be so attentive. When I once rubbed my eyes after some ash had entered, two nearby women immediately offered me water to get it out.

Some more random observations about Colombia:

The rumor about beautiful Colombian women (in most cases) is actually true. The one about Colombian Spanish being the clearest and most understandable in Latin America... not so much.
Colombians love to say "Ah sí, claaaaaaro" (what to me just sounds awkward).
Despite its bad reputation, Colombia at night felt generally safer than Peru and much safer than Mexico.
Houses many times are built in a kind of colonial style, with several floors and nice stone walls. Definitely pleases the eyes more than Peruvian or Mexican "functional style" architecture.

And some observations a bit less politically correct:

Apparently, every country in the world, no matter how underdeveloped, seems to be able to produce way better toilet paper than the Mexicans do.
In general, people are much more slender than what you normally see on the street in Mexico.
Neither Colombian, nor Mexican food comes even close to the delights of Peruvian cuisine.
You really see a lot of drug addicts - apparently, Colombia itself suffers most from foreign demand... Drug wars, addicts, reputation...

Already knew 3 kinds of "Sapote" from Mexico. In Colombia I discovered a very tasty fourth type.

Uuh, and the least pleasant part during the whole journey happened at the very end of my stay in Villa de Leyva. Already in the bus, some guys tricked me, messed up my clothes and stole all my euro reserves, together with my German debit card. Luckily, I always carry with me all the necessary information to block my bank cards. Literally with the last credit I had on my Mexican phone card, I managed to call the emergency number in Germany and the card was blocked before anything worse happened.

Deep-fried sweet, resembling German "Berliner" (flavour-wise), but additionally to the jam, in Colombia they put cheese. Bascially, Colombians add cheese to everything... Everything.