Villa de Leiva and an interesting van ride

This morning I headed to Villa de Leiva, which is a nice colonial town, with many beautiful churches (all closed, see picture as I had to put at least one church online) I also witnessed a great race when I was there, which was one of the most enterntaining I have seen in a while, with a bunch of kids on bikes and a clown and police.


Van Adventure

Anyway, I missed a bus on the way back to Chiquinquira. It was supposed to leave at 2p.m. I was there at 1:58, and figured I had time to go to the bathroom. I could have told the bus(van) driver that I would be a minute, but he left when the bus was full. In any case, after I came out, and the bus was gone (not leaving, gone!) I asked someone, why it left early. What I then witnessed was amazing. It consisted of a little bit of running, a few whistles, a bus that then stopped (a bus leaving thinking I wanted to be on board and then honking its horn) which then led to a group of people around another corner to start whistling. All the while, I started running to where all the noise was, and where the people were waving. No less than 4 blocks of running and the bus was waiting for me. Oh, it was full, but in reality, they are never full. Think full size van with 16 people. I got in and off we were. I love the busses here because they are very fast, they are very flexible (you just say when to stop, or wave to be picked up) and they are quite cheap. Once a few people got off and I got a seat, I noticed the man next to me pouring down Aguardiente (a liquor similar to Sambuca) like there was no tomorrow. Then, he actually starting whistling at the driver like he wanted to stop (in the middle of no where) but actually started to lecture the driver on safety and slowing down. He explained to me that the roads weren´t safe, but I enjoyed the rollercoaster type rides. After he got off, the driver had to go after him because he hadn´t paid. Oh yeah, and we stopped in the middle of the road once while the drive crawled under the van to make some sort of throttle adjustment.

Anyway, it was a good time. No picture of that really, so use your imagination.