The Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá

Sunday, January 28, 2018  Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá

The Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá is one of only two such cathedrals in the world, the other being in Poland (which we visited in 2012).  It’s about an hour and 20 minutes out of Bogota, and we drove there this morning.  On the way we passed this billboard:

I’ll need to research if there’s any connection to our Rochester.edu.  The salt cathedral is a huge series of rooms built in an old salt mine, one part of which is still in use.  There is a walk, gradually down, with 14 large cavernous rooms, each representing a station of the cross, and each with a unique presentation of a salt cross.  Here are three of the 14:

You approach the cathedral proper from above in the rear, and come across a statue of the Angel Gabriel watching over:

Here’s a photo of the cathedral proper taken from the choir loft.  For  scale, note the people on the floor below:

One of the anterooms has a remarkable salt chandelier:

The path into and down to the cathedral is a mile long, gently sloping downhill.  The mile back feels far more steep than it did going down (we’re still not fully acclimated to the 9000 foot elevation at the salt mine).

Following lunch we drove back to the outskirts of Bogota, and visited the Sunday afternoon happening in a neighborhood.  There was food—here’s roasted corn for sale:

There was a very busy crafts market:

And we saw, not for the first time, “Big-bottom Ants” for sale to eat.  They’re a local delicacy.  

Breakfast tomorrow at 4:00 AM, we leave for the airport at 4:30 AM for our 6:30 AM flight to the town of Armenia in coffee country.