Tunja, Boyacá

The central plaza with, of course, a statue of Simón Bolívar.  

This was the parking garage we found in Tunja and kind of sums of Tunja.  Sorry, it wasn't my favorite city.  It did have some of the steepest, hilly streets I've ever driven on.  

We drove to Tunja after stopping at Puente de Boyacá.  This was our shower by the way.  It took a bit to figure out how to get mildly hot water.  Tunja is not a hot place, just fyi. It was cold!  

But my kids were SOOOOOO happy to stop at this hotel.  It was just off the main plaza in an old building from the 1600s.  But BEDS!!  That's why my kids were so thrilled.  It was the first time they had all slept in beds since our last trip to Choco in October.  

Sebastian even posed in his, he was so happy.  

The doors were awesome and the whole building had a central courtyard.  It was really cool.  

We wandered around the main plaza in Tunja for a bit.  I wish I had photos (they passed too rapidly for me to really register what they were and take photos). When I first came to Colombia in 2009, I remember seeing hides just staked to the ground on the hillsides when we drove to Puente de Boyacá.  This time there were these rows of, well, I couldn't really tell what they were honestly.  But kind of low triangular things that reminded me of the small calf shelters I've seen.  Anyway, I finally realized hides were draped over them all, drying in the sun.  And all through the streets of Tunja, you can buy leather belts and leather bags, etc.  It was handy because Sebas had forgotten his belt and we bought him a new one, because really most of his pants don't stay up otherwise.

Tunja was established in 1539 and it does have a really pretty main plaza.   I wish I had a chance to visit the museum Casa del Fundador Gonzalo Suárez Rendón--the house of the conquistador that settled Tunja.  It was built in the 1540-1570.  But we were on a strict timetable, so I had to limit myself and I don't think the kids are as interested in history as I am.

I LOVE the massive doors.

This was in the oldest cathedral in Colombia.  It was finished being built in 1574.  

Gorgeous ceiling.  I think church ceilings are my favorite part of seeing the old Catholic churches.

This was driving to Villa de Leyva the next day.  Again, it's not well captured in my photos, but there's so many greenhouses perched like they're about to fall of the side of the hills everywhere near Villa de Leyva.  They grow blueberries for the most part from what I understand.  

As we got closer to Villa de Leyva the terrain got drier and and drier.  

I think this was taken in Villa de Leyva (I think) and you can see it's practically deserty--for Colombia anyway.  Actually, it's a fairly typical Mediterranean climate, they grow olives and have a ton vineyards near there as well. 

Puente de Boyacá and Lovely Countryside

Leo and I had discussed for a long time where we wanted to travel to in Colombia.  I threw in Choco at the last minute, and we knew we wanted to go to Cartagena and Santa Marta with the kids. But there were so many options after that.  I would have loved to see the Cafetera region, or down to Los Nevadas National Park, San Agustín, or Leticia and the Amazon (Leo banned all talk of that after Choco) or the Llanos.  But after discussing it a lot, we decided to road trip to San Gil, because we thought it would have the MOST activities the kids would enjoy.  San Gil is called the Adventure Capital of Colombia.  But our first stop on our road trip there was Puente de Boyacá (the bridge in the above photo.)

I tell Colombians I like Boyacá and their response is always like, "Why?" and a little shake of the head in disbelief.  But it's a lot like Cundinamarca (my favorite!)--a little chilly and just green with all these little small towns.  I don't know, I think it was just when I visited Colombia the first time, driving through Boyacá was just so lovely to me since I was out of the Bogotá and it just seemed so Andino. (I guess it not being covered in a massive city means I like it is pretty silly 🤷‍♀️).

Fun car.

These photos don't really capture how pretty the landscape was.  

Celery?   I think it's celery.

See, now who could possibly say Boyacá isn't beautiful?   But yeah, not much to do there to be truthful.

So Puente de Boyacá is the site of the most famous battle between the revolutionary forces of Simón Bolívar and the Spanish army, and heralded the Spanish losing the war.  According to Wikipedia "the result of the battle was a decisive victory for Santander, 1800 Spanish prisoners along with the Spanish commander were captured."  (Francisco Paula de Santander was the general leading the bayonet charge across the bridge.) 

The kids had fun on the monuments. 

This is: The Von Miller Monument (for German sculptor Ferdinand Freiherr von Miller), depicting five allegoric female figures symbolic of the Bolivarian countries, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, surrounding Simón Bolívar.  (thanks Wikipedia!)

So this was a plaque commemorating the legion of mostly Irish and Scottish soldiers that fought at the Battle of Boyacá.  Basically tons of Irish and Scottish soldiers were out of a job after the Napoleonic Wars ended and a bunch came and joined the revolutionary army fighting in Colombia. One of Simón Bolívar's aide de camps was Daniel O'Leary born in County Cork, Ireland.  Anyway, that was totally random, but it's kind of fun when I'm working on genealogy records and find random kids named a funny mix of Irish and Spanish names. 

 

This statue was actually of Santander.  He was the 2nd president of Colombia.  Simón Bolivar (from what I've read) was pretty idealistic, ie Free all the slaves!  Give women the right to vote!! Limit the Catholic church's influence!! Unite ALL of South America into one country!!! Etc.  But that of course didn't fly with everyone and there was a lot of backlash ie coup and assassination attempts.  Santander was kind of the more realistic one who had experience in law who came in and made a lot of compromises trying to keep Colombia a country instead of splintering into even more pieces ie Bolivia, Venezuela etc.  We lived just a few blocks from Santander's house in Bogotá and we never went.  I'm still sad about that.

Here's a painting of the battle with Santander on the horse in the middle of it.

 

Here's an interesting video about the battle if you want to watch more. 

And I actually really enjoyed this movie.  Might be a scene or two to skip over, but overall I thought it was well done.  Simon Bolivar is definitely never boring.

May Things

Jubal's class.  I liked his teacher but I think the language barrier was hard on them both. She was from the coast and I had a rough time understanding her.  The school ended up asking us to test Jubal for ADHD, which we did, but the psychologist in Colombia didn't think he had ADHD and was more just bored when he couldn't understand as well, and then Jubal did not behave the best.  Lovely.  

The police brought some K-9 dogs and did some demonstrations.  

The boys loved it.

This is actually Efraim by the dog.  

Sebastian and his obsession with ants continued.

I bought clothes and was trying to decide which to keep.  Exito always had such cute clothes.  

I took this one back, but I kind of wish I hadn't.

They had a talent show at the church for Mother's Day where all the YM had numbers.   Efraim was furious that he didn't get to perform in the show.  He kept asking me before it started what did he get to do,  and when I said nothing, he did not accept that as good enough.  So then he just got up before they started and started dancing to the music in front of everyone.  That kid loves to entertain.  And yeah, everyone loved it.  😂😂 Lando did yo-yo tricks and Sebas played the guitar with a group of boys. 

Here's a later demonstration of Efraim's dancing.

Leo was flying in North Dakota and made the announcement at 1 AM for the passengers to look out the window.  Beautiful!!!  He said everyone was excited to look.

I like Leo's office view.

And Nicolas won an award for academics at La Salle.