After three weeks in the big city, I was ready to start exploring pueblos again. If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you have probably figured out that I’m a big fan of the pueblos in Colombia. Maybe “fan” doesn’t describe it accurately… it’s more like a “Hi I’m Jasmine, and I’m a pueblo addict,” kind of thing.
I’d been wanting to explore the region of Boyaca, which is chalk full of tiny villages, for awhile now. A few months ago, I visited Villa de Leyva in this area, which remains one of my favorite places in Colombia. First stop was Paipa, land of the almojabanas, which are like a yummy cheesy type of bread that you can find in most panaderias in Colombia.
The alrededores of Paipa, or the surrounding landscape, are really beautiful. The pueblo also has its pretty parts, but all in all it’s fairly average (to be fair, my standards are pretty high).
Paipa has some really cool artwork on the walls around town with inspirational messages, and there are tons of handicrafts for those souvenir shopping.
We wanted to hit the aguas termales, or hot springs, located about half an hour away from Paipa. Unfortunately, we had to leave our room early and we didn’t want to leave our bags there either because it was a sketchy scene. So we pushed on to Sogamoso.
Sogamoso is an unremarkable place that’s too big for my liking. A strange, toxic odor permeates the town, strong enough to make me walk around with my scarf around my nose and mouth like I do in Bogota. I still haven’t figured out where that horrid stench comes from.
The real gem of this trip is Monguí. I had seen a television program recently on a Colombian channel interviewing some of the townspeople and it looked like a pretty pueblo. In Sogamoso Googling pictures, I saw it was similar to Villa de Leyva, so we decided to give it a shot.
Next up: The Pueblo of my Dreams: Mongui
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