Colombia – Zipaquirá & Chai

2020 FEBRUARY 7 —

We booked a trip to The Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá. It is about an hour away from Bogota.  We picked up another couple (Paige and Brad) who were from Birmingham, UK. They were spending several weeks travelling Central and South America and had several good travel locations for us to research for future consideration. 

The Salt Cathedral is an underground Roman Catholic church built within the tunnels of a salt mine 200 metres (656 ft) underground in a halite (rock salt) mountain near the city of Zipaquirá. As with the salt cathedral in Krakow, Poland, the miners built a chapel to pray for their safety.  It expanded and got more elaborate as time went on. The original chapel was built in 1932, but was deemed unstable and closed in 1992. However, a new cathedral had already been started in 1991 and was officially inaugurated in 1995.

We were issued audio guides and sent on our way down the gradual incline into the bowels of the working mine. There were 14 Stations of the Cross.  They were all simply a cross carved out of the salt. Some stuck out from the wall, some were recessed into the wall, and some were a combination of both.

The Cathedral had three different halls, depicting the birth, life and death of Jesus. There were huge chandeliers that each had 150 (I think) salt bobbles handing down.

The altar was a huge block of marble and had a giant cross etched into the rock behind it. The lighting made it look like it was floating in mid-air. There were also some beautiful sculptures with very indigenous features. 

The cathedral is a functioning church that receives as many as 3,000 visitors on Sundays, but it has no bishop and therefore no official status as a cathedral in Catholicism.

There was also a huge area with vendors selling everything from salt jewelry and religious items to an emerald museum and gift shop. The emerald is the official stone of Colombia. There were even small restaurants and coffee shops. We were told it would take about 2 hours to complete, but both Ed and I, as well as the other couple, were finished in just over an hour. Maybe we missed something…??? 

We walked back up to daylight then headed to the restaurant where our driver was waiting for us. Included in our tour was a traditional Colombian meal. We were first served a variety of fruit. The meal consisted of various sausages and some roasted potatoes. One of the sausages was a blood sausage. The comment was made that we may not like it.  I always have to laugh at that. I grew up on it and have even made it. Blood up to the elbows! 

SIDE NOTE: Colombian meals are meat, with meat on the side, and more meat for good measure. If you want a salad, you have to order it separately. Their potatoes are delicious! They usually come as roasted baby potatoes and are melt-in-your-mouth soft inside. Potatoes may or may not come with the meal. It is usually just meat, with meat on the side. 

We stopped in the city of Zipaquirá where our driver took us to Independence Park then to Plaza de Los Comuneros that had a very old church. He started to walk us around the quaint little town but it was obvious there was not much to see. 

Paige spoke good Spanish and told him we would rather go to Andres Carne de Res in Chia. It was on our way back to Bogota and we all had read it was a must-see. 

This was the craziest restaurant I have ever been to!  Walking in was like walking into a HUGE eclectic junk shop. We laughed that their decor was the leftovers from a charity shop. Every available space had some sort of light fixture, old telephone, candle holder, or old coffee pot. Every light fixture was lit. It didn’t matter if it was Christmas lights, an old shop sign, or vintage fixture. The menu had 82 pages. It was more of a catalog. There were people dressed up like the cast of Cats, dancing around and playing some silly game with random tables. Someone at the table always got a sash like a beauty contestant.  I secretly hoped they would come to our table, but they didn’t. The place was huge and it was packed! This was Friday afternoon. We wondered what it would be like on a Saturday night. We each ordered a dessert and a non-alcoholic beverage, since we had just stuffed ourselves at the salt mine. We left knowing why this was a must-see place.  

We arrived back at our apartment around 6:30 pm.  We unlocked the door to find the lights on and people sitting at the dining room table.  Since it was a three bedroom apartment and we had only one room, we assumed we had roommates. The owner was there too. BUT something seemed fishy.  The people at the table were manually counting stacks (and I mean STACKS) of money. Now there could be a hundred explanations for this. Considering Colombian money is in thousands (a bottle of water costs 1500) and we constantly had a huge wad of money as pocket change, maybe they were dividing up the days profits from a business venture, like a street market.  But considering we were in Colombia, our imaginations ran away with us. We said our hello’s and made a bee-line to our bedroom and locked the door. A short time later they left, taking their stacks of money with them. 

The next morning we had the security guard hail a taxi for us.  As I mentioned earlier, we were on the corner of a very busy roundabout. The guard hailed the taxi, which stopped on the edge of the round about. The guard wrote down the license plate number before allowing us to get in. Off we went to the airport to fly to Armenia for our visit to Salento.