Villa de Leiva is a beautiful little town that reminded Tess and I of Franschoek walking around it: little cobbled streets, white houses and Tuscan style roofs, minus the vineyards unfortunately. Villa de Leiva is also considered a World Heritage site and definitely deserves the title. We really loved Villa de Leiva and wished we could have spent more time there.We arrived from San Gil on a short bus ride (4hrs) to Tunja and then another 45 mins to the town itself. We left the bus station confident we would find Hostal Rana, situated in Calle 10a 3-30. When we reached Calle 10 (road 10 in Spanish, not very orriginal, but easy to follow for us Gringo's) we couldn't seem to work out the numbering of the houses. We asked the nearest shop owner if she knew where the place was and she kindly gave us some directions. After we reached the main town square we knew that we had gone a little too far, but only to find the shop assistant running after us giving us new directions. Very sweet! We still haven't figure out the house numbering system and even after asking the owner of Hostel Rana she could enlighten us any further.
Once we had checked in we headed out to find ourselves some
lunch. To our pleasant surprise we found a lovely Italian restaurant that had a
hugely diverse menu, from grilled meat and fish to all kinds of pasta and
pizza. Tess for the first time was spoilt for choice on the food side.
After the amazing lunch we wondered around the town for a
bit, there was a political rally happening in the evening and there were loads
of cars, bakkies and buses making their way to the town square, which is the
centrepiece of the town: a huge, magnificent cobbled square that has the
cathedral dominating the one side. We opted out of joining the rally and headed
back to our hostel instead for a quiet evening.
We got an early start the next morning and headed out to
explore the beautiful town some more. We wondered the lovely streets and found
ourselves a fresh juice and pastry for breakfast. Fuelled up we wondered up to
the top of the town where we had a lovely view over the town and the surrounding
areas. It really is a fantastic little town. 
Unsure what else there was for us to see, we went past the
bus station to buy our tickets to Bogota later that afternoon and then buoyed
by the great lunch the previous day we headed to our new favourite restaurant
only to find this closed for a private party. Standing outside looking rather
confused, a lovely lady asked us if we were looking for a restaurant, we said
that we had eaten at this place the previous day and we hoping to do the same
again. She then assisted us in recommending another few places around town, so we
set out in search of our next great meal. We found one of the places she had
recommended, Tess was so pleased with the place she actually had a steak, which
was great a great change from her usual; chicken and rice J.
Later that afternoon we headed to catch our bus to Bogota
and a rather rude surprise was waiting for us: when we bought our tickets we
were told that our bus would be a company that we had seen in a few places and
we were comfortable with what to expect, when she showed us the bus that we
would be on we were rather worried. Firstly, there was nowhere underneath the
bus to put our luggage and so Tess and I each took two seats one for our
luggage and one to sit in. This rather cheeky space hogging approach was very
short lived and the guy came in demanding if we had paid for four tickets (we
obviously hadn’t) so we had to squash up with our big backpacks in front of us
for a four hour journey. Now we were pissed off to say the least! We had been
sold a lemon! Secondly, the bus door didn’t close properly! Considering we were
sitting closest to the door we were concerned that some of our things may fall
out! Thirdly, the décor in the bus was
all green with tassels everywhere, like old fashioned curtains from many
decades ago, some silver silhouettes of naked ladies that kind of bounced
around as we moved and some rather kitsch signs, like “A need for speed”
coupled together with weed stickers. We were not overly convinced that this bus
was going to get us there safely, on time, or at all for that matter!
We assumed the rubbish bus was going to go via Tunja, a city
where we knew the big bus companies went through to Bogota, so for the next 10
mins we figured out how to say in Spanish that we wanted to change buses, get
some of our money back and change to a smarter bus in Tunja, this quelled the
anger only slightly. This resolution was very short-lived as the bus we were on
made a turn away from Tunja, direct to Bogota. So we settled in for the long,
uncomfortable, stressful journey. By some small miracle in the end they got us
to where we needed to be safely and on time!
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