Pietra Santa Camping Bungalow

For genuine dinosaur hunters, Villa de Leyva’s natural history museum and fossil museum are full to the gunnels with local finds, and you can have close-up encounters with scale models of the scaly monsters among the primordial landscapes of Gondava theme park, 15 minutes’ away. History of a more recent kind is hard to avoid in Villa de Leyva: the museum houses of Antonio Ricaurte and Antonio Nariño tell the brave and bloody tale of Colombia’s struggle for independence, while the Museo del Carmen is crammed with religious art. Out of town, the stone circles and ruined temple buildings of Moniquirá and Gachantivá (20 minutes and half an hour’s drive away) attest to the rich and ancient traditions of the local Muisca people. For hikes among the heights, you can’t top the trails around the waterfalls of La Periquera and El Haya, half an hour and 45 minutes away. If you’re after something less noisy (and more of a challenging climb), head into the cloud forests of Iguaque and climb up to the lake of the same name. Trails start half an hour’s drive from town to this high altitude zone, considered sacred to the Muiscas and so serenely quiet that many tired visitors lie down for a snooze.