I can tell you that it's not easy traveling when you're tired. I wouldn't recommend. I usually don't, but I had to make an exception for once. I had stayed too long in San Gil and really had to move on if I still wanted to see everything on my list.
To get from San Gil to Villa de Leyva, you need to take a bus from the main bus terminal, going to Tunja (+/- 4,5 hours). From Tunja you take a smaller bus to Villa de Leyva (+/- 45 mins to 1 hour). Be aware that the last bus from Tunja to Villa de Leyva leaves at 6.30pm. If you arrive later, you'll have to spend the night in Tunja. I don't think there is much to do or see there tough.
I had a booking in Hostal Renacer, up the hill. If you are light packed, you can walk up, it's not that far, but in my case, I took a taxi. It was also already dark and I don't like to walk around in the dark in a town or city that I don't know yet.
The hostel didn't have a snack bar or restaurant, so I had to be inventive for dinner. I had a noodle soup with Dorito chips. Sometimes when you travel around and you don't have access to a shop or healthy food immediately, you have to satisfy your hunger with the weirdest things...
In the guest kitchen I met Tim and Seb, 2 almost graduating students. Seb offered me a guanavana juice. I had never tasted this fruit, so I was pretty excited about it! The fruit is huge, green and looks like it can sting you. Inside it is white and has big black seeds.
Villa de Leyva is a charming old colonial town. The architecture has still remained the same as in the old days. I love these kind of towns, it reminded me a little of Barichara, tough this one was more crowded. Seb, one of the travelers joined me to El Fosil. El Fosil is a museum where a large fossil of a pliosaurus was found. They have built the museum around it, to preserve it as best as possible, so it hasn't moved from its original finding place.
On the way back to the hostel we were looking for the clay house "Casa de Barra". It has a very strange architecture! The creator made it "ready to live in", so all utilities were working. I found it very interesting! I think you can rent the place to stay in or maybe to have an event in. Initially the place was closed, so we could only take pictures from the outside. But just when we wanted to leave a group of other tourists arrived at the clay house and apparently they had been able to convince the owners to open it up. Lucky us!
Behold!
