Off the Beaten Track 3 - The Dominican Monastery

After leaving the Vineyard we headed out into the country, I was seeing areas i couldn't really have dreamed of seeing. Roads that one minute were tarmaced and good quality and around the corner a dirt track road that even a 4x4 would struggle on. We wound our way up into the hills of the Andes till we eventually reached the Dominican Monastery called EcceHomo. This produced a strange sensation, walking through the entrance into the inner area produced a noticeable change in feeling it was a truly tranquil place. It felt like someone had put a cover over the area as you walked in and all extraneous noise seemed instantly muted. The Monastery is a museum to the arrival of the Dominicans in Colombia, though it doesn't look like they have repaired anything since getting there, and while moving through one of the large halls a wall mounted stone shelf that had probably been in place for a hundred years or more crashed to the ground raising a small pile of dust. One of the things I quickly noticed in this area of Colombia was the abundance of fossils, I have always retained an interest in fossils from the times as a child I wandered the local river with my father who was a Geology/Geography Teacher. The joy of finding something so ancient yet so perfectly preserved in stone was a feeling I would never lose. Everywhere you look in Villa De Leyva you can find fossils literally under your feet (I will talk about fossils more in the next but one post) for now here are the photo's from the Monastery visit including the tiled entrance made out of - yes fossils.










The Monastery entrance from 1925 and from today.











Inside the central courtyard and a few more fossils used in the cement of the walls