Boyacá

Villa de Leyva Day Trip from Bogotá

You will hardly find a place in Colombia that takes architectonic preservation as serious as Villa de Leyva. This small village located in the department of Boyacá and it’s a 3-hour drive from Bogotá. Spanish colonizers founded the village in 1572, visiting it gives the sensation of going back in time and in 1954 it was declared a national monument.  Get a closer look at the colonial history of Colombia’s and the fascinating towns outside of Bogotá on an 11-hour daytrip to Villa de Leyva. This mellow area’s exceptional architecture, great artisan craft shopping and historical richness offer the perfect combination. Get started with a 7 am pickup at the hotel, proceeding north towards Villa de Leyva. Enjoy of a historical stop at the Boyacá Bridge, where the battle of Boyacá took place in the 19th century which helped secure Colombia’s independence from the Spaniards. Afterwards you’ll arrive to Villa de Leyva where you can take your time to admire the striking architecture of this area and learn the history around it thanks to a professional guide. Go to El Infiernito (Little Hell) and marvel in an ancient Muisca observatory and how they used to calculate the optimal time for harvest and then visit the blue pond, a water reservoir created by farmers. The water’s color has turned into a surprisingly vivid blue that contrasts beautifully with the arid vegetation. Finish your visit to Villa de Leyva with an authentic Colombian lunch and (at your own expense) before proceeding to Raquirá, a small village nearby, famous for its amazing craftsmanship of woodworking, pottery, basketry and more. Have the opportunity to do some souvenir shopping and the then proceed to go back to Bogotá where you’ll be taken back to your hotel. Optional: Change any of the activities above for the Casa de Terracota, which is a house made of clay measuring 500 m², considered the largest piece of pottery in the world. Designed and built by architect Octavio Mendoza, this house is baked in the same manner as pottery makers when they produce vases, dishes and other decorative objects.

3-Day Trip to Villa de Leyva from Bogotá

You will hardly find a place in Colombia that takes architectonic preservation as serious as Villa de Leyva. This small village located in the department of Boyacá and it’s a 3-hout drive from Bogotá. Spanish colonizers founded the village in 1572, visiting it gives the sensation of going back in time and in 1954 it was declared a national monument.  Get a closer look at the colonial history of Colombia’s and the fascinating towns outside of Bogotá on an 11-hour daytrip to Villa de Leyva. This mellow area’s exceptional architecture, great artisan craft shopping and historical richness offer the perfect combination.

3-Day Trip to The Emerald Mines from Bogota

Enjoy a complimentary hotel pickup and transfer from the airport to the mines. Enjoy the spectacular view traveling through the Andes to the town of Chivor. Departing from Bogota Airport, you'll first head to take in the stunning views of the Bogotá Region and enter to Boyacá department. 6 hours road trip with the stops you prefer for food, snacks, drink and restrooms. Your bilingual driver and staff will provide commentary along the way. After the completion of your trip, enjoy the town of Chivor, it's peaceful and beautiful views and it's tasty food. Interact with local people and miners. Get ready to go to the tunnels and be a miner for one or two days. Depending on weather and fatigue or not we may visit a near mine and even enter a tunnel in night hours.  Next day we’ll go in a four wheel drive vehicle through the roads in a fully adventurer road to get to an emerald tunnel. You will get your boots, helmets and tools and will listen about how emerald is formed and mined. Inside the tunnel all what you find will be yours! We’ll be around the tunnel area and have lunch in a miners village. At the end of the day we’ll head back to Chivor. The third day we’ll go to enjoy natural attractions of Boyaca (waterfall, lake, nature worship history of native Indians) and the Andes landscapes and will get back to Bogotá on a 6 hours trip back including stops to enjoy typical food and handcrafted souvenirs.

Full-Day Tour Villa de Leyva

One of our representatives will pick you up at the hotel to begin a journey through the beautiful landscapes of Boyaca, Tunja and Villa de Leyva. The first stop will be at “el Puente de Boyaca”, where the battle in which the Country acquired its definite independence took place. Here you will see the obelisk and the triumphal arch. The tour will continue towards Tunja (which means 'mighty man' in Chibcha), a town that in times of the Muiscas was already of great relevance and continued to be so in the colonial times. There you will take a walk to visit the Founder's House, the home of the notary public Juan de Vargas and the Santo Domingo church, among other places. Then, you will head to Villa de Leyva (lunch included), where you will take a walk along the town to see the old colonial houses that have been transformed into museums and the convent of the "Santo Ecce Homo", which since 1620 has attracted pilgrims from around the globe. At the end of this experience we will return to Bogota.

Bogotá Emerald Gemstone Tour

We start our trip at the Parque Santander, where you can see several landmark buildings of Bogotá, including the former building of the El Tiempo newspaper, the Bank of the Republic, the Gold Museum and the churches of San Francisco, La Veracruz and La Tercera. There, we will travel up to the 23rd floor of the Avianca Building, an architectural landmark of contemporary Bogotá, to enter the Museo Internacional de la Esmeralda, where we will visit a 27 square meter tunnel with samples of the emerald deposits and real veins extracted from the mines of Boyaca. Here we will be able to appreciate the process of working with emeralds, from its extraction in the mines to the carving and handcraft of jewelry making, which we will see live in the museum workshop. The collection showcases unique emeralds from Colombia such as the Fuego Ferde (Green Fire) and Trapiche emerald, known for its strange shape of a star.After that, we will walk along Carrera Séptima and Avenida Jimenez, the center of the emerald market in town. Our path towards the Plazoleta del Rosario will let us experience informal traders who are buying and selling emeralds on the streets daily where you will learn the importance of acquiring stones at authorized and reliable stores. This route will take us to the Eje Ambiental and the commercial center for emeralds with the largest number of organized shops in Bogotá. Then we enter the Emerald Trade Center, a building with local and export business offices. Finally, we will walk to La Candelaria, to finish our tour at the Galería de Artesanías y Esmeraldas de Colombia, a place where we will be received with a cup of Colombian coffee and you will enjoy crafts from all over the country. Here you will discover the makeup of emeralds and learn to recognize original stones and their value according to their color, clarity and carat weight.At the end of the day we will have seen natural rough emeralds originated millions of years ago, jewelery in silver, yellow and white gold as well as other other precious stones.

Overnight Trip to Villa de Leyva from Bogotá

Day 1:Get started with a 7am pickup at your hotel, proceeding north towards Villa de Leyva. Enjoy a historical stop at the Boyacá Bridge, where the battle of Boyacá took place in the 19th century which helped secure Colombia’s independence from the Spaniards. Right before arriving at Villa de Leyva, you'll travel to El Infiernito (Little Hell) and marvel in an ancient Muisca observatory and how they used to calculate the optimal time for harvest and then visit the blue pond, a water reservoir created by farmers. The water’s color has turned into a surprisingly vivid blue that contrasts beautifully with the arid vegetation.You’ll reach the colonial village around 2:30 pm (14:30) and check into the beautiful cozy hotel, located a few minutes away from Plaza Mayor, that’s booked for your group. Feel free to explore the town the rest of the afternoon. The village was established around the enormous Plaza Mayor, a cobblestone main square that has a surface of 14,000 square meters and its delimited by the church and the colonial houses which are know shops, restaurants, hotels. Wander through narrow cobblestone streets and be swept of your feet by their charm, white washed facades and rustic wooden doors.  Day 2:Explore the village and its surroundings by yourself, or you can arrange any other activity of your preference (not included in the price). Even though Villa de Leyva is small, it has a wide range of activities to offer from hiking in natural parks to buggy races, horseback riding, bird watching, archaeological sites to museums and historical buildings. At 11am, you will be picked up at your hotel and you’ll be taken to Raquirá, a small village nearby, famous for its amazing craftsmanship of woodworking, pottery, basketry and more. There, you have the opportunity to do some souvenir shopping and then proceed to go back to Bogotá where you’ll be taken back to your hotel. *Please note: you can change any of the activities above for the Casa de Terracota, which is a house made of clay measuring 500 m² in Villa de Leyva is considered the largest piece of pottery in the world. This is the Terracotta House, bricked coloured structure that architect Octavio Mendoza baked in the same manner as pottery makers when they produce vases, dishes and other decorative objects. It is a construction which according to its creator, transforms it into habitable architecture.