Erin & Regan's South American Adventure
Villa de Leiva
Hola,
On the colectivo to Villa de Leiva we met a Czech traveller called Stepan. We ended up seeing the sights of Villa de Leiva with him.
Our purpose in visiting Villa de Leiva was initially to walk up (another) hill to a lake and see the 3 stages of vegetation on the way. We had been told it was beautiful. However, Erin also discovered the local pottery.. more on that later.
Our day started at 6:30, we had managed to convince a local lady to get up extra early and make us breakfast. We caught the colectivo at 7am and arrived at the start of our walk at around 7:35.
The first part of the walk was 3km up a gravel road to the ranger station where we met the nice ranger, signed in, paid the fee and tried out his bike.
Actually, he has a new one now.
These photos show the 3 different stages of vegetation.
When we arrived at the lake there was a mighty fog, we couldn´t see the lake and in fact didn´t realise it was less than 3m away.
It was also rather cold (but still sunny, yes, sunny).
The fog eventually cleared, note the crazy woman is still in shorts.
We retraced our steps only to discover that the transport home was a few hours away. We tried to hitch a ride but the only vehicle going our way didn´t even blink at us. Finally we lucked out (of a sort) and got a lift on the back of a truck carrying freshly cut eucalyptus poles. It was .. interesting. (Erin says fun!).
Back at the hostal we discovered the pet duck playing in the fountain.
