Villa de Leyva

Sierra and Diana picked me up at the hostel in San Gil, and together we drove down to Villa de Leyva. This was the last stop on my Colombian tour, and it was utterly splendid from start to finish.(More photos of Villa de Leyva in this post.)(We stopped for a bit in a little town called Oiba to stretch our legs.)The Plaza Mayor. Villa de Leyva has a very rich colonial history.A few shots from the farmers' market:This hood ornament is just about the coolest thing EVER.In lieu of seeing the "dinosaurs," we opted for some actual fossils at a tiny paleontology museum:We also spotted a fossil in the courtyard of a local winery.After my friends went back to Buca, I had a day and a half more to potter around town before heading back to the airport in Bogotà. I amused myself with lugubrious religious art at the Carmelite museum......went for a walk in the hills outside of town......and reconnected with a friend I'd made back in San Gil. I also met this precocious little home-schooler, with whom I played a few coin toss games. (I can't remember what the game is actually called.)I also chatted with a new friend we'd made whose parents own an adorable cafe in town, and he promised to make me a tinto campesino--a traditional style of coffee flavored with cloves and other spices—but when I went back in the morning, the cafe was closed. Wistful sigh!(Thus concludes my Colombia recap.)