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a weekday getaway: Tunja

This week we got out of the house and played tourist in the nearby towns of Tunja and Villa de Leyva, a few hours outside of Bogota.

The first day began with our second, but much longer trip on the TransMilenio to pick up a bus out of town. With some luck, we managed to snag one of the nicer buses with cushier, reclining seats, and a TV with a DVD player, featuring some kiddie mystic-magic-Harry-Potter-ripoff flick. Just as we were in a near-sleep state of travel bliss, the bus pulls over to the side. Colombian military board the bus: "Everybody except children, out of the bus with IDs ready."

Interesting.

I half considered whipping out the little camcorder to video this whole event, but changed my mind at sight of the various automatic weaponry which the soldiers were carrying.

For a second I wondered if the decision to bring only copies of our passports, as opposed the real thing, might be an issue. It wasn't. While everyone else's IDs where kept while we stood outside on the side of the highway, mine was given right back to me. Brendon's got taken over to a guy in a little shack with a computer where his passport number was taken, but that was the extent of that. One random guy got padded down. IDs were returned, the bus was re-boarded, and we were off again.

A short while longer and we arrived in Tunja a town of about 160,000 people and capital of the Boyacá department of Colombia. With an hour or so to kill before the churches and museums of interest opened, we wandered around looking for a decent bar to no avail. Never a good sign.

By the time we'd found a restaurant and had lunch, the tourist spots were open. First was a colonial mansion turned museum. A tourist police officer gave us a tour in Español. Catching about every seventh word or so, we managed to get a very clear understanding of the place. Some guy lived there a long time ago, and, it's very old. Yeah. It did have some interesting painted ceilings that blended European mythology with some local mythology, and random non-mythical animals.

Moving on, the goal was to visit two churches. One was having multiple funerals. One was closed. The last attempt was very ornately decorated, but photos were not allowed. With Tunja seeming to hold nothing else of interest, we hopped on another bus for the far more touristy Villa de Leyva.

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