Tour Guide, Villa de Leyva, Colombia
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Villa de Leyva and Saquencipá Valley – territory known by this name before the XVI century. You have a great opportunity to find yourself in the midst of the most genuine values this region offers. I invite you to rid off your city habits, and to let our people “conquer” you with our peculiar ways, and our lives. If you adopt this attitude, we’ll be at ease because you will help us protect our treasures. You will say: “but…what treasures?”
Amongst other treasures, think of: Monquirá’s and Candelaria’s fossils of this pre-historic sea, Sáchica’s rock paintings, traces left by demolished indigenous towns such as Sanquencipa, Yuca, Pavachoque y Sorocotá… and the contemporary: Suta, Tinjacá, Chíquiza, Arcabuco, Sáchica, Gachantivá and its place names, the admirable astronomical observatory dating 4.000 years, Ráquira’s clay grounds, and their transformation into refined pottery, La Candelaria, and El Santo Ecce Homo monasteries and their relics, Chiquinquirá’s religious traditions, Santa Sophia’s Stations of the Cross, and Sáchica’s representation of the passion of Christ, Guatoque’s, Sorocotá’s and Salitrillo’s primitive, warm and exuberant landscape,with its caves for those who enjoy speleology, Gachantivá’s hydrological torrent, expressed in the many waterfalls, the longaniza (a kind of chorizo,) the guarapo (a fermented beverage made out of sugar cane,) the Mazamorra (a soup made out of corn,) and hundreds of viands,all of them from Spain, proudly offered in Sutamarchán, Villa de Leyva and other towns,with their churches, clay roofs, and colonial portals.
Corn vs. wheat; cows vs. deer; pine and olive trees vs. oak, Chibcha language words in Spanish, Muisca blankets and their transformation into ponchos, multicolor dresses vs. the Spanish secular black and white, Bachué, mother of the firm breasts, the law of origin, and the birth of a nation, the beginning and end of some of our heroes, the first Republic, miscegenation… In sum, think of the origin of the expression “a su merced,” ( at their mercy)and in what it means nowadays. All of the above and much more constitute… THE TREASURES, THE MARVEL, THE TRACES AND FRONTIER OF THE OLD AND THE NEW WORLD All of it greatly evidenced in this Valle de Saquencipá Welcome!