Villa de Leyva

12/08/2011
During the week Villa de Leyva is a small quite village in the middle of the mountains where people live off agriculture.
However, in the last few years, thanks to few telenovelas being filmed in its white streets, VDL has acquired a certain fame and people from Bogota come here to spend their weekends.
For this reason we struggled to find accomodation on Saturday, even though the place is packed with hotels and posadas.
Not only we turned up on a Saturday without reservation, but most importantly we chose the weekend when the "festival de cometas" was on.
Please note that cometa here stands for kites, not falling stars (although the festival was held the same day as the night of falling stars).

Apparently the main square of Villa de Leyva is the biggest square in the whole of South America.
You can probably fit in it up to 2 football pitches side by side.

Talking of football, the day was also topped up by a football game between Colombia and Mexico.

I can safely say that Colombian people tend to be fairly loud.
Sometimes, during our bike travels, when we wizz through small villages we are met by huge waves of  salsa and merengue behing played by competing shops in the attempt to catch your attemption.

Now, during a national football game this colombian loudness reaches "another level"!!
The climax is of course when the national team scores: starting from the TV speaker shouting "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOO"  for a good 2 minutes to the sorrounding crowds playing the loudest horns ever.

Sadly for Colombia, Mexico won 3-1 that night, so we were able to have a good night sleep in the once again quiet Villa de Leyva.