Uncovering the Bounty of Boyaca.

• Author: Englebert, Victor

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Trrential rains soak the Boyaca landscape, two hours north of Colombia's capital, Bogota, Small brick and adobe houses with faded whitewash or chipped paint dot the roadside, looking cozy in the February downpour. Snug behind my windshield, glad to be returning to this region with my camera, I pity the drenched cyclists pedaling frantically to seek shelter. The afternoon storm doesn't seem to trouble the farmers, on foot or horseback. Their wide-brimmed felt hats and thick wool ponchos give them a measure of protection as they herd their cattle home over yellow and brown fields. The rainy season has come early, promising the flower-filled villages and markets that I love to photograph.

Night falls, and save for the ribbon of pavement shining in the headlights, the world disappears. The contours of houses and villages have melted into blackness, so their lights have lost context. They could be fallen stars.

I arrive in Paipa, where the hotels and restaurants cast their bright lights on the wet pavement. In the lull before tourists descend on the town for Holy Week, two or three people dash through the night rain, fleeting and immaterial as phantoms. My hotel room tonight faces moody Lake Sochagota, named for a Chibcha cacique.

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Paipa indigenous people lived in this place long before the first Spaniard set foot in Colombia. Its thermal baths, among the best in the world, have attracted distant visitors since time immemorial. At more than 8,500 feet above sea level, it has a spring-like average daytime temperature of 60[degrees]F. For a few days, I will use Paipa as a base for one-day drives.

TO AND AROUND LAKE TOTA

At dawn, the ghostly figures of fishermen with their tall, thin rods move slowly through the mist. I, too, go out to linger for a while. As a photographer, I love the mist. Walking through it, I can redesign the landscape at will, watching houses, trees, and fences take and lose shape. I can make the summer houses on shore look like fairytale abodes--or turn the lake reeds against their white background into the brush strokes of a Japanese painting.

In the early morning, as I drive away to Lake Tota, townspeople at street corners wait for buses to take them to work. But in fields and meadows, farmers have long been busy, milking cows and carrying foaming milk in red or blue plastic pails. They pour it into ten-gallon cans, which they load onto the backs of donkeys.

In a green orchard, a little girl runs after a calf. On a path skirting the road, an old man rides a frisky horse. His cocked straw hat and yellow T-shirt marked "Playboy" belie his creased and dignified face. Suddenly a bicycle race dashes by with its parade of radio cars and motorcyclists carrying the spare wheels.

Past the industrial center of Duitama, where flour is milled and cigars rolled, I take the road to Tibasosa. What veins of copper or silver does the road pass over as it winds through the green countryside?

An old church and an even older gnarled eucalyptus dominate Tibasosa's plaza, where a full-time gardener tends to the carpet of...