Cancer Treatment Centers Of America

Villa de Leyva, white city

The most striking feature in Villa de Leyva is light. The colonial town, founded in 1572 290 kilometers of the Colombian capital, comes light. The intensity of white that covers the walls makes you appreciate more the little color on the frames of doors and windows, or any flag flying. Here

filmed part of the film Green Cobra Werner Hertzog, among many others, perhaps because the city retains its original layout and part of its colonial architecture, although more than one historian argues that very few houses are genuinely Colonial. Perhaps because it was not on the list of World Heritage Site by Unesco. Either way, is the story of Villa de Leyva that gives prestige and fame.

The painter Fred Andrade chose as his residence the heights around Villa de Leyva, there set up his workshop and built a couple of delightfully decorated guest studios with their works. The vivid colors of his brushes overflow the pictures hanging on the wall, extend over the wooden furniture of the rooms. Everything is color, perhaps in contrast to the whiteness of the city you can see from there as the crow flies. There I stayed at the bottom of a steep road to enjoy the view and the silence.

The Plaza Mayor of Villa de Leyva is a picture path to what could be a great city that would erect stately buildings, cathedrals and palaces as in other colonial cities of America. But the delusions of grandeur of its founders were not realized, and today the church of Our Lady of the Rosary is not even project their shadow on the pavement of the plaza.

The pavement is no more than four or five decades, but it helps to go back in time to hear the hoofs of the horses and knights to imagine his hat to greet the girls reclining on flowery balconies. The streets are like infinite corridors where the glare of white walls burning eyes. Too much light is tempered by the sober colors of the balconies, doors and windows, usually green or blue.

The inner courtyards of the colonial houses, with stone arches, vaulted corridors ceramic or wood, water fountains and cascades of flowers, now house craft shops and restaurants, some excellent, like that "The Tomatina - where I had the pleasure of eating different preparations of sea bass, adding to the Cartagena tasted a couple of days earlier (herbs, pesto, garlic, or tangerine and honey). One eats well in Villa de Leyva.

Near Villa de Leyva is the Puente de Boyacá, famous for the battle in the August 7, 1819 the Liberation Army sealed the independence of Nueva Granada by defeating the royal army. Bolivar, who led the attack and became triumphant in Bogota on August 10, he returned to Villa de Leyva September 25, according to a plaque. The so-called Ruta de los Libertadores includes several villages in the area. Everything seems so small in the perspective of years, even the casualties suffered by both armies (13 fighters and a hundred Republicans realistic).

A mere six kilometers from the city, the olive grove where the word stands " is right-Monquirá astronomical observatory, known as "little hell" seems to have been in fact a place of worship muiscas for fertility, judging by stone phalluses hundred large and medium-vertically-erect .

In sharp contrast to the archaeological park Monquirá is the character pious and collected from the monasteries that are in the area. The priests lived in isolation, in retirement, but in their isolation created optimal conditions to serve God in harmony with the tranquility of their spirits and their stomachs. The monasteries of Santo Ecce Homo and La Candelaria is located in peaceful places in the midst of short valleys surrounded by hills. They are stone buildings, spacious and secure, with woods and farmland.

In Ecce Homo a stone plaque in the dining room of the monastery leaves a Latin inscription reading: "Bibas ut ut Vivas biba non living" in Castilian could be translated as "Drink to live, not live to drink" . The wine was combined well with the rosary (or the Rosary, as in the joke about the pastor of the town).

friars lived surrounded by Christs sad and prickly, and bleeding saints staring at the sky and says that they were punished with whips, perhaps to balance other worldly compensation (other than the promise of heaven). In 1977

near Villa de Leyva discovered the remains of a kronosaurus seven meters long and over 100 million years, a marine reptile which gives us an idea of \u200b\u200bwhat it must have been the tectonic phenomenon that raised the ocean floor to form the Cordillera de los Andes. The Museum Fossil -so called-is a tour company run by the local Community Action Board.

All this is not bad for a weekend break, but if I get to choose between Villa de Leyva, Popayan and Mompox, the three most representative colonial cities of Colombia, without hesitation choose Mompox, as remote condition between two arms of the Magdalena River has allowed to preserve its magic and mystery over time.

Colombia has much to do but it is an unknown country, little known, in a secret way for non-Colombians, because from the outside only appear to view their problems.