My friends at work had warned me that there might be quite a bit of traffic getting out of town on a holiday weekend, so we got an early start Friday. We were rewarded with almost no traffic. We drove out of town on the autopista that the girls and I take every day to get to school, and Vivian kept exclaiming that there was no traffic. A little bit past where we usually get off was the first toll, and then the road turned into a beautiful paved path between rolling hills.
It was a lovely drive. The first part was along the nice highway with periodic short stops for tolls. It was very green.
Then we turned off onto a narrower, twistier road that lead towards the town, and the views became more rocky.
We started to notice cacti. It was really interesting, but not for people who get car sick. We knew we were getting close to the town when we started seeing dinosaur crossing signs.
The rocky cliffs we had been admiring are great storage for dinosaur fossils, and they have a paleontology museum in Villa de Leyva that we didn't make it to this time (we have a long list for our next visit!).
We had a little bit of trouble finding our Airbnb, because we didn't turn down the dirt road we saw, thinking it couldn't be the right way. Well, it was. It turns out the house we were staying in was in a lovely residential area with dirt roads.
In addition to the six of us, two other families came for the weekend, so we were in three cars. It took a while for everyone to make it to the house. While we waited, Jeff took some pictures.
The attic bedroom was a big hit. There were five girls total in our group, so they got to have a big slumber party each night.
The other favorite spot was the hammock on the little terrace area outside.
Luckily, the hammock was not near the garden's cactus.
Once our whole group of 14 arrived we headed into town to find some lunch. It's a lovely little colonial town, which is apparently very quiet most of the time, but it was quite crowded for the long weekend and festival.
We stopped outside a restaurant that had interesting outdoor seating with little thatched huts. There were also a lot of off duty police officers eating there, so we figured that was a good recommendation
Our group was too big to fit in one hut, so we split between two.
Jeff got the "typical plate" which was a lot of grilled meat. He was happy.
Towards the end of our lunch, some musicians showed up. Elena was thrilled.
The only person who didn't enjoy lunch was Vivi. We had let her have a snack of Doritos, and this is the second time she hasn't felt well after eating them, so the rest of her life may need to be Dorito free. Elena was also starting to get a bit tired, so I decided to take the two of them back to the house. Along the way, Elena kept examining the melted remains of candles. Thursday night had been a night to light candles in both Bogotá and Villa de Leyva. We hadn't made it out on Thursday, but Elena still enjoyed the leftovers.
After a little bit, the rest of the crew came back with desserts and a dinner reservation.
We fueled up on coffee and sugar, and then we headed out for our dinner reservation at Mercado Municipal.
We were too big a group to sit out in the courtyard area, so we had dinner inside, and then came out into the courtyard when the fireworks started at 8.
It was great. Elena thought so too.
The fireworks show is actually a competition between different fireworks companies, and it goes on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. Since we knew it was going to be about an hours worth of fireworks Friday, we slowly paid and packed up, and then walked home slowly, stopping to admire the fireworks as we went.
People were camped out all along the route back to the house, and we made a mental note that we could still see the fireworks pretty well from the street corner nearest the house.
The next day, we got a slow and lazy start. Jeff, my dad, and one of our friends set off on a hike up the hill. He got a great picture of the town spread out below.
The rest of us just wandered into town.
We made a stop at a recommended restaurant, Carnes y Olivas for a lunch reservation.
Our main objective though, was the main square and the chocolate shop. Elena kept walking with minimal fussing, because she knew chocolate was in her future. The main square was in full preparation for another night of festivities.
We found the chocolate shop off on one corner.
It was a small shop, and nothing was labelled, so we had to take our chances. Vivian found a solid chocolate church.
Elena found some chocolate dinosaurs, right on eye level. Happiness :-)
We did some more walking and looking around, but I could tell that Elena was starting to lose it, so I took her, and we headed back to the restaurant. As soon as we sat down, I ordered her a mango juice, which came quite quickly. By the time everyone in our group ordered, and my drink came, her mango juice was half done.
The lunch that day was just so, so. They had several kinds of pastas on the menu, so some of us optimistically ordered pasta. None of them were very good. We bribed Elena with the promise of more sweets, and then headed to the other side of town to find the French bakery several people had recommended.
We got a couple loaves of bread to make sandwiches for dinner, plus an assortment of the yummy looking desserts. Elena also got her walking reward.
Along the way back to the house the group broke up a bit to shop for fun things and necessities like milk and eggs. As we got closer to home, it started to rain. We had talked about going on more adventures in the afternoon, but since it was raining outside and we had food, drink, and friends inside, we decided to just stay put.
It worked out really well, since the weather meant that the fireworks didn't start until 9:30 that night. The little kids stayed home, and some of the adults and big kids walked down to the corner to watch.
It's really hard to capture in pictures, but it was so much fun to watch. The Saturday night fireworks went on for almost two hours. We watched about an hour and then headed back to the house. We could hear the cheering and music from the main square when we were outside, and we were grateful that our house was a bit removed from the main part of town.
Our last morning we all slept in and then took it easy once we did wake up. We tried to give the kids as much time to play as we could.
Eventually though, we had to pack up and head home. The ride back was pretty smooth. We admired the rocky and then grassy landscape again.
There was no traffic until we got close to Bogotá, and then it was a slow crawl past where we usually exit for school until the road opened up to five lanes again. It started raining just before we got home. We decided to order food and have a well deserved relaxing evening watching the new season of The Crown. We declared our first Colombian road trip to be a success.
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