Salt Cathedral

Getting to Zipaquira

I woke around 0600 and let Kim sleep till around 0700.  I had needed half a sleeping pill to take me through the night.

Kim was feeling decidedly off-colour again and I gave him the option of neither one of us going to the Salt Cathedral about 90 mins away.  He felt confident enough with his tummy and decided it would be better to no hang around the dark cool room all day.

We headed out for breakfast around 0800.  He at only part of his scramble eggs and felt chucky.  I finished it for him and then ordered an Uber for the Salt Cathedral in Zipaquira.

Some things I’ve noticed on the roads so far:

• There are lots of bicycle lanes around, some of them like flyovers.
• The contra-flow bus lanes are like the Trans-Jakarta.
• Motorcyclists wear helmets with numbers painted on the back to match the bike number plate!
• Commercial vehicles like taxis and vans have large stickers of their number plate on their sides (and later when we took our first bus trip, we noticed these were on the roof as well).

Through heavy traffic, we arrived at the Salt Cathedral at 1000.  The driver offered to wait for us for an hour for free (with a tip if we were longer), and the same fare back as Uber but in cash.  That worked well for us with Kim in a sad state.

Visiting the Salt Cathedral

The Salt Cathedral turned out to be a disappointment for us, even more so when one factors in the cost of the entry tickets, cost of the transport and 3h transport total.

Why?  It’s probably a little unfair for us to say that but we had been to the Wieliczka underground salt mine which was far more impressive and people who have never been to anything like this will still enjoy it.

We walked down a tunnel to where the underground experience started.  We visited the fourteen stations of the cross, of which most were the same … a cross carved out of the stone and illuminated.  I had expected to see carvings depicting each scene.

Finishing the fourteenth station, we got to the various chapels.  One of the small ones stood out in particular, and the largest one was of course quite impressive.

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After that, there were various places selling souvenirs related and unrelated (eg. Tutankamun) to the salt mine.  There were some food outlets too, in addition to the ones at ground level.

With a little difficulty finding our way out due to poor signage, we were underground for an hour.  We commenced our drive back to our accommodation at 1115, reaching there at 1245.

Back in Bogota

Kim headed straight to bed while I grabbed a burger at a nice café we had contemplated dining at.  The meal was good but they asked for service (tip) at the end.  I grabbed a bottle of Gatorade for Kim on the way back as he had a light dinner and hardly touched his breakfast.

With our upcoming travels, one of our moves, specifically from Villa de Leyva can only be accomplished by private transport.  The price we had received was much higher than expected and we had to find an ATM to top-up our cash situation.  This was easier said than done.  ATMs and banks were hard to find as the ones on Google Maps weren’t in existence.  Spotting them was hard and finding one that would work was even harder.

With Kim’s tummy situation, this proved even more stressful.  Fortunately, we found some banks near the Gold Museum.  With that sorted, we commenced our walk back stopping at the Botero Museum.

Botero specialises in art that makes the subject look round and fat.  People, fruit, horses, cats etc.  The museum did have artwork from other artists as well.

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As Kim was still unwell, I took dinner by myself.  Not feeling too hungry, I chose a roasted vegetable sandwich which turned out to be awesome.  The experienced was ruined by the waiter asking for a tip before calculating the total bill.