Leaving Bogotá we set off on a three hour drive towards the Colombian Highlands which slowly turned into a seven hour marathon.
The first distraction, after just 45 minutes, was a Salt Cathedral, which I wasn’t too enthused about visiting, but it happened to be in the town of Zipaquirá where we planned to stop for lunch and having arrived earlier than expected had some time to kill. The Salt Cathedral used to be a 200m deep salt mine, but in 2005 they decided to increase the size of all the tunnels and commissioned a modern artist to reinterpret the fourteen stages of the crucifixion of Christ. Had they have got a real artist to create an installation for each chamber it might have been better, but when you need a guide to explain that a broken rock symbolises the women washing Jesus’ feet then it’s not great. More interesting was the little exhibit detailing the original salt mining operation, and explaining the ever present sulphurous smell.
In the depths of the salt cathedral was the main congregational area. An area was reserved for the sacrament and past this the corridor divided into 3. The left passage was intended for those without sin, then middle passage for those with some sins to repent and the right hand passage for those beyond redemption. Naturally there was a scuffle to force ourselves down the right-hand passage after lightning struck those who tried to enter the other two.
Back in Zipaquirá we found the BBQ shop we’d driven past, with the carcass of a variety of animals hanging in the window, over an open fire. For less than $5 we were presented with a huge plate of beef and pork, and a solitary small potato by way of vegetables. Vegetarians probably just got two potatoes.
Stuffed we left town and spotted one of the many strawberries and cream sellers that lined the roads in this area. Nobody was hungry, but we stopped anyway and tucked in, although I think the local dogs did better out of it than we did.
As the sun started to set we arrived at the desert town of Villa de Leyva and the Colombian Highlands hostel. With it rather short on rooms we all ended up in the same dorm and no one wanting to go to bed early sat round a log fire whilst the staff prepared a communal barbeque. A few glassed of mulled wine and a huge amount more red meat and one small potato later we broke out the rum supplies and made friends with the huge range of other people staying at the hostel.
The party continued until the early hours but we all managed to wake each other up for a 9am start on the tour of the area. This started somewhat underwhelmingly to visit a man who’d decided to build himself a large pottery house out of terracotta clay. Disappointingly his name wasn’t Bill or Ben.
Next up was a visit to the local version of Stonehenge, with one marked difference. The stones were all a little carved to improve the fertility of the area, as can be seen from the 5th picture below. Much fun was had suggesting how the stones might have been erected.
Next was a monastery, which sounded like it might have been grand, but all that remained was a single was and a pile of stones, the rest having been taken to build the visitor centre, immediately destroying the main attraction of the visitor centre.
Slightly further down the road was a museum containing some of the many fossils found in the area. These were mostly complete and ranged from an entire sea monster through to a humorously badly faked land animal thing stuck together by local farmers to drum up some interest. Equally huge was the scary caterpillar running across the path outside.
Finally for the morning was a trip to the Blue Lagoon. This was an attractive looking blue pond in the middle of a desert area. Not much more to add really, but we managed to stare at it for at least half an hour.
We got dropped off back in town to find some lunch. The others went in the first place they saw for some more meat and a potato, but a couple of us listened to advice and sought out a little French Bakery, run by an angry French lady, and bought a baguette and some cheeses and had a perfectly good picnic in the town square. A large slice of tarte tatin finished us off and at half past two we were looking forward to the return of the guide and heading back to laze on a sofa watching a movie. Instead he sprung a two and a half hour walking tour of the town on us. In addition to lunch we’d also picked up the ingredients to cook dinner in the hostel kitchen so had to lug bags of shopping up and down the cobbled hills whilst looking at a variety of pretty house and odd statues.
Really quite tired we grabbed a coffee which woke us up enough to remember that one of the main ingredients of a risotto is rice, so after another trip to the supermarket we were left to walk the 3km home, still carrying the shopping.
Whilst the others prepped the room for film night I prepped a vegetable risotto and some wholemeal garlic toast in an attempt to balance out and shift the huge lumps of meat we’d been eating for days. By the time we added half a kilo of parmesan this all smelt rather good and the other inhabitants of the hostel appeared looking hungry and very jealous so we shared it with the cute Israeli girls and left the Australian boys to their noodles.
The boys wandered off to their dorm to do whatever 5 sulking Aussie boys do together of an evening whilst the girls joined us for rum and the funnier than expected rom-com The Ugly Truth.
Bleary eyed in the morning we drove back to Bogotá and our final two days in Colombia.
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