Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral and flying through the US

May 23 - 25

I had a morning flight to Bogotá, Colombia's capital, where I would spend just one night before a very early departure on towards Vancouver. My flight with Avianca was all on time, and I got a taxi to my hostel in the city centre. At some 9 million inhabitants, the city itself is twice as populous as the whole of New Zealand, and I have to admit I hadn't heard of it before I left home.

It reminded me in many ways of Lima - big, sprawling, busy and not that many interesting things to do. There was one thing near Bogotá, however, that is unique in the world - a massive Catedral de Sal (salt cathedral) built out of the disused areas of a salt mine by a town called Zipaquirá. Rather than wander the same-old, same-old churches and museums in town, I worked out the metro and bus system and made my way to Zipaquirá.

After briefly walking through part of the lovely little quaint town, I headed up to the salt mine on the hill and was greeted with this entranceway - and a smell of salt:

Entrance to the Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral

The cathedral is constructed in a now-disused part of a large salt mine, with three massive naves, the 12 stations of the cross, and a small chapel, all lit up in very eerie dark re/purple colours. It was mined between 1950 and 1989, was opened as a cathedral in 2001, and is actually available for weddings etc as well as the standard guided tours, with capacity for 3000 people. The walls, ceiling and floor are all constructed out of original salt rock (believe me - I tasted it).

The guide (and everyone else working there) had to wear a safety helmet but we didn't. Apparently the risk to us is considered low enough if only visiting, but high enough if working there. It didn't fill me with much confidence, especially when he later pointed out a large block, about one metre square, which had apparently fallen from the ceiling just three hours earlier. They do keep a lot of monitoring of movements and gas levels inside the mine, however.

I'm not a religous man, but I have to say the cathedral was very nicely presented and constructed. The guide led us down past the 14 stations of the cross, most of which were at the ends of long tunnels carved out for the mining process. This was one of them:

Station of the Cross, IX: Jesus falls for the third time

A lookout showed a very commanding view of the main nave of the cathedral. The cross carved into the back of this nave is a massive 15 m high, 10 m wide and 70 cm deep, to give you a bit of an idea of scale. Let's also not forget the floor is 180 m below ground level.

Main nave (Nave de la Vida - the life of Jesus) of the cathedral.
On either side are the Nave del Nacimiento (the birth of Jesus) and the Nave de la Resurreción

The cylindrical columns comprising the walls between each nave are massive - probably at least 10 m diameter at a guess.

Large pillar looking from the left-hand nave towards the middle

Further down inside I found some neat carvings in the walls.

A beautiful tree carved into the salt walls

It was well worth the trip out to Zipaquirá and I was glad I'd visited something else than the sites in the city in my limited timeframe.

The next morning, I was in the taxi at 3:20 am on my way to the airport for a long day of flying. Little did I know the miserable, driving rain was an omen of worse things to come...

American Airlines flight in Bogotá airport

The first flight to Miami went OK, a bit late leaving but we caught up time and I got a neat view of Jamaica and Cuba out the window. Then things started going wrong:

• Miami immigration took over an hour in one queue, then another 40 minutes to get through customs - with no provision for people close to missing their flights at all
• With 1:50 to make my connection, including re-checking in my bag, I missed it by a mile
• I got rebooked on the next flight to Dallas so that I should still make my original Dallas-Vancouver flight - very simple, but it seemed a very "reactive" rather than "proactive" customer service
• Flight to Dallas was half an hour late leaving
• Halfway through taxiing to the runway we then returned to the gate and after waiting half an hour on the plane, were told that the plane was being taken out of service
• New plane arrived in Dallas 2 hours late in severe thunder and rain (fitting my mood!)
• Got put up in a Marriott Hotel for the night (which was actually good - I managed to refresh myself and it was easily the most expensive place I stayed in on my trip)
• Then immigration officials in Vancouver took me aside to a special questioning area - suspicious over my plans to go from Colombia to Amsterdam and visit a couple of old friends in Canada - they thought I might be carrying drugs
• After lots of questions about how much money I had, what my friends do in Vancouver, etc, I finally was allowed to enter Vancouver over 36 hours after leaving my hostel in Bogotá

I have to add my voice to the many swearing against air connections in the US - while the American Airlines service was pretty reasonable in the end, the whole experience was a terrible one. 

I was very glad to spot my old friend Nic waiting for me when I finally got to the arrivals hall. Two weeks of fun in Vancouver, here we come!