Southern Exposure

Saturday, January 17

We woke up around 10 am, feeling a bit beat up from last night’s fun at Andre’s. After breakfast we decided to visit the Salt Cathedral, a tourist destination that Lew recommended, about 30 km outside of Bogota. Jeffrey had a day off from school and was hanging around out at home playing video games while Lew and Jennifer went to a wedding.

The ride to the Cathedral was along the same road as Andre’s restaurant. Lew warned us yesterday that there was a man hole cover on the road that was actually not covered, just a 2 ft hole on the main city road – extremely dangerous for motorcyclists. He pointed it out to us last night, saying that it has been there for at least two months and nobody was in a big hurry to cover it up. Riding that three-lane road I was nervous about ending up in the wrong lane at the wrong time. It also started to rain, which always makes me ride half the usual speed, and I think I was getting on the nerves of the crazy Bogota drivers being so cautious. Once we passed the man hole we knew about from Lew there would actually be at least two more during our trip to the Cathedral and back that we had safely avoided. I simply don’t understand how such major road hazard especially in the city filled with motorcyclists can stay unattended for 2 months.

After a wet ride we got to the small town of Zipaquirá that housed the salt mine and the subsequent Cathedral. We got our tickets and waited in line to get into the mine. The group we started with had about 25 people and the tour was in Spanish. We asked if there were any tours in English and were told to wait another 20 minutes. We only waited for about 10 minutes when an English speaking guide showed up and we had our own private tour.

This mine is the largest salt mine in South America and produces about 85% of all salt in Colombia. The first Cathedral in that mine was actually built by the miners for religious purposes in the last century and was located about 2,700 m underground. It became dangerous for visitors as the salt rock is very unstable, so it was closed and a new site was built 300 ft below ground in 1990 mainly as a tourist attraction, but nevertheless impressive and very surreal as everything there was made out of salt rock.

There were about seven or eight chambers each served as a station of the cross, culminating in a major hall with the largest underground cross in the world carved out of the salt rock.

The guide told us that there were only about three baptisms and four weddings performed in the Cathedral which seemed like too few considering how gorgeous and unusual the place was.

There was a room filled with salt carved figures depicting a nativity scene, a round dome room lit up in neon blue light, a “three spirits” room and a few other rooms all lit up with neon blue, purple, green, red or white light adding to the surrealist quality of the experience.

After the main ceremonial hall with the cross we entered a room for honoring the dead. I felt a strong desire to spend a few minute there to honor my mom. Our tour was over so I asked Matt if we could sit on one of the benches in silence. I closed my eyes and started getting immersed in the inner feeling of warmth and calmness, evoking my mom’s spirit. A very soft sound of monks chanting started coming out of the walls. Strangely, I haven’t noticed the music before, but now, as I was tuning inward, it was providing a perfect background to my meditation, especially meaningful because mom used to love to listen to her monks chanting tapes. A few minutes later a large group of tourists came in and it was difficult to concentrate, so we started our walk back out of the cathedral/mine, feeling very peaceful, happy and content.

We rode back to Bogota in the rain, and when we got to the apartment Jeffrey was still home playing video games. We decided to take him out as it seemed like he could use some company. We had a tasty lunch at an Asian place called Wok – we have never been so excited to eat spring rolls, phad thai, and curry. We finished off our lunch with a cup of coffee and dessert from Oma and headed home to take a rest before the home party that night.

I was feeling quite exhausted by 8 pm, but it was time to get ready to socialize. One of Jennifer’s friends Dani came specifically to talk to us after he found out about our journey. He had also ridden his bike to Ushuaia a year or so ago from Colombia and wanted to share his thoughts and suggestions with us. He was one of the first to arrive and we spent an hour looking at maps and making notes of his route. We met other interesting people, friends and family of Lew and Jennifer, and everyone was quite impressed with what we were doing. At midnight I could not hold it any longer and went to bed. Matt showed up soon thereafter. The next day we were departing Bogota to go south.