Most visitors see Villa de Leyva on foot, in the two blocks around the Plaza Mayor, and leave convinced they have seen it. Ride out of town in any direction and you find the actual reason to come: a high desert of ochre and grey that looks nothing like the rest of green Boyacá, laced with quiet roads and a fossil record older than the Andes themselves.
Our third stage is a 53.3-kilometre loop out of Villa de Leyva with 759 metres of climbing, running through Santa Sofía and past Gondava. We call it The Desert and the Dinosaurs, and it is the day that most surprises riders who came for mountains.
01 — The townCobbles, and what they mean for your bike
Villa de Leyva was founded in the sixteenth century and declared a national monument, which is why it looks the way it does: whitewashed walls, clay-tiled roofs, and one of the largest cobbled squares in South America. No modern facade has been allowed to interrupt it.
A practical warning that no travel guide gives you: those cobbles are brutal on a road bike. They are large, irregular river stones, not the neat setts of a Flemish classic. Ride them slowly, in a straight line, and preferably not on 25 mm tyres at full pressure. Most of our riders end up walking the last hundred metres to a café, and there is no shame in it.
02 — The desertWhy the landscape changes so abruptly
Ten minutes out of town the vegetation thins and the ground goes pale. The valley sits in a rain shadow, and the result is a semi-arid landscape at 2,100 metres that feels borrowed from somewhere else entirely — sandstone formations, cactus, and long sight lines that make the riding feel bigger than the numbers suggest.
It also means the light is exceptional and the heat is real. This is the one stage of the traverse where you are more likely to be too hot than too cold, and the sun at this altitude is unforgiving. Ride early, carry more water than the distance suggests, and use the shade when it appears.
Boyacá is not one landscape. It is a dozen of them stacked vertically — and this is the one nobody expects.
03 — The fossilsA seabed at two thousand metres
The valley was underwater in the Cretaceous, and it has been giving up marine reptiles ever since — the reason the area has a museum built around a fossil found where it lay, and a paleontological park at Gondava on our route. Riding past a road cut and realising you are looking at an ancient seabed at this altitude reframes the whole ride.
It is also, quietly, one of the best arguments for seeing this region by bike. In a car you pass the geology at eighty kilometres an hour. On a bike you climb through it slowly enough to read it.
04 — PracticalitiesWhen to come and what to expect
- Best conditions: the drier windows around December to February and June to August. April and May are the wettest and cloudiest months in this corridor.
- Surface: the loop is largely paved, with rougher sections that reward a tyre with some volume. A 28 mm tyre is comfortable; wider is fine.
- Altitude: around 2,100 m — noticeably lower than the Tota stages, which is exactly why it sits early in the itinerary.
- Traffic: light outside the town itself, heavier on weekends and during festivals, when Villa de Leyva fills with visitors from Bogotá.
- Nearby: Ráquira, the pottery town, is close enough to combine — and it is the reason half our riders go home with something ceramic and fragile in their luggage.
05 — Where it sits in the traverseThe day that resets expectations
We place this loop on the third day, after Guatavita and the Puente de Boyacá stage, for two reasons. It adds real distance while keeping the altitude moderate, which is useful while your body is still adapting. And it breaks the visual monotony that a week of green mountains can produce — riders arrive at the high country afterwards having seen that Boyacá is not one thing.
We base ourselves at the Getsemaní in Villa de Leyva for two nights, which also means an evening in the town without a bus schedule to meet. Two of the dinners here are deliberately left free: this is a place worth choosing your own table.
Ride the desert loop
The Villa de Leyva stage is 53.3 km and 759 m of climbing through Santa Sofía and Gondava, on day three of the Boyacá Traverse. Request the dossier for the full route.