I´m simply covered in Jesus. We´ve been hanging all week, we´re buddies now.
We´re in Villa de Leyva for Holy Week. It´s a tiny town up in the mountains north of Bogota, one of the oldest settlements in the country and still the proud bearer of all it´s original colonial architecture. The town plaza dates back to 1527 and is the largest cobblestone space of it´s sort in the entire continent. The mortar between the rocks is so worn away that when it rains, navigating it´s a bit like jumping across a stream on river rocks.
Normally sleepy, this place goes wild during Holy Week, or Semana Santa. Rich Bogotans head up for a long weekend and that big cobblestone plaza goes mad with street musicians and drunken teenagers hiding from their grandparents, who wear heavy wool panchos and hang out in restaurants drinking canelazos (hot drinks made with Aguardiente, brandy and cinnamon).
We headed out on Good Friday to the even smaller town of Salchica, where they were having the annual presentation of Semana Santa en vivo! We arrived a few hours early to an empty village that slowly filled, until at noon when the presentation, or play, or Jesus Olympics as I like to think of it, Salchica was packed to the gills with Colombian fans of our boy JC.
For the next five hours (to be fair we ducked out after three- one can only handle so much Christ), Erik and I and thousands of Colombians followed actors in Roman soldier tunics, belly dancer costumes and of course, semi-historically appropriate leather sandals, all around the immediate geographic area.
Forgive me if I butcher these religious references, I have little to no knowledge of the Bible. But the whole mass of us walked a kilometer out of town to the river to watch Jesus baptize the apostles and snipe at the Devil. Then we walked back into town to watch some sort of harem scene with Heron and Salome. Then we walked to the town center for Judas´betrayal and the sentencing of JC himself. The more excited of us ran ahead to the location of the next scene to get the prime seats. We mainly walked.
There were peanut vendors and little old ladies fanning themselves and guys standing on posts for a better view of the Holiness of it all. We don´t have these things in the States, I´m telling you that right now. Check it out, here´s Jesus and his buds on the left (Sermon on the Mount? Again, I know nothing) and about one-twentieth of the crowd assembled on the hill to the right.
The Villa de Leyva doesn´t stop there either! We rode mountain bikes out to El Infiernito the other day, the ¨Stonehenge of Colombia.¨ Well, if Stonehenge was made of ten foot stone penises. The Muisca indigenous people, ahem, erected this place way back when as an homage to the fertility of the earth- a noble motive that did not sit well with the Spanish conquistadors, who dubbed this place ¨little hell¨ because that´s where they figured the penile architects were ending up for their phallic veneration. Prudes... here´s Erik and El Infiernito in it´s full glory.
We´re in Villa de Leyva for Holy Week. It´s a tiny town up in the mountains north of Bogota, one of the oldest settlements in the country and still the proud bearer of all it´s original colonial architecture. The town plaza dates back to 1527 and is the largest cobblestone space of it´s sort in the entire continent. The mortar between the rocks is so worn away that when it rains, navigating it´s a bit like jumping across a stream on river rocks.
Normally sleepy, this place goes wild during Holy Week, or Semana Santa. Rich Bogotans head up for a long weekend and that big cobblestone plaza goes mad with street musicians and drunken teenagers hiding from their grandparents, who wear heavy wool panchos and hang out in restaurants drinking canelazos (hot drinks made with Aguardiente, brandy and cinnamon).
We headed out on Good Friday to the even smaller town of Salchica, where they were having the annual presentation of Semana Santa en vivo! We arrived a few hours early to an empty village that slowly filled, until at noon when the presentation, or play, or Jesus Olympics as I like to think of it, Salchica was packed to the gills with Colombian fans of our boy JC.
For the next five hours (to be fair we ducked out after three- one can only handle so much Christ), Erik and I and thousands of Colombians followed actors in Roman soldier tunics, belly dancer costumes and of course, semi-historically appropriate leather sandals, all around the immediate geographic area.
Forgive me if I butcher these religious references, I have little to no knowledge of the Bible. But the whole mass of us walked a kilometer out of town to the river to watch Jesus baptize the apostles and snipe at the Devil. Then we walked back into town to watch some sort of harem scene with Heron and Salome. Then we walked to the town center for Judas´betrayal and the sentencing of JC himself. The more excited of us ran ahead to the location of the next scene to get the prime seats. We mainly walked.
There were peanut vendors and little old ladies fanning themselves and guys standing on posts for a better view of the Holiness of it all. We don´t have these things in the States, I´m telling you that right now. Check it out, here´s Jesus and his buds on the left (Sermon on the Mount? Again, I know nothing) and about one-twentieth of the crowd assembled on the hill to the right.
The Villa de Leyva doesn´t stop there either! We rode mountain bikes out to El Infiernito the other day, the ¨Stonehenge of Colombia.¨ Well, if Stonehenge was made of ten foot stone penises. The Muisca indigenous people, ahem, erected this place way back when as an homage to the fertility of the earth- a noble motive that did not sit well with the Spanish conquistadors, who dubbed this place ¨little hell¨ because that´s where they figured the penile architects were ending up for their phallic veneration. Prudes... here´s Erik and El Infiernito in it´s full glory.
Onto the Desert of Tatacoa next, after a brief stopover in Bogota to retrieve Erik´s replacement camping hammock (Fedexed by my lovely mother after I accidently melted his original... don´t ask). Tatacoa is meant to have the best starscape in all of Colombia and we´re camping out in it´s arid loveliness.
Til we meet again,
CD
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