TravBuddy.com: Zipaquira Travel Blogs and Reviews

Cathedral De Sal

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:46:45 PST

Zipaquira, Colombia>, Aug 30, 2007

Cathedral De Sal in Zipaquira, Colombia is an underground cave cathedral that is made entirely of salt(tried tasting it, and i really assure you that it is very salty). The place is a very solemn place to visit and usually gets busy during the holy week. A lot of walking but very rewarding to see. On the way to the altar, you'll be passing the fifteen station of the cross. Each station offers a unique sculpture of the cross. The place is cold to visit even during the summer so it is always recommended to wear something warm. Always bring your bottled water, there is no store or market that sells water inside the cathedral. The rock formation is just awesome!!!

Zipaquirá - Charming Town, Amazing Salt Cathedral

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:13:38 PST

Zipaquira, Colombia>, Jan 17, 2006

Zipaquirá

If you are spending more than a couple of days in Bogotá, I highly recommend a pleasant side trip to Zipaquirá.

Zipaquirá is a charming town located 48 kilometers north of Bogotá. The city’s main square is surrounded by old Spanish Colonial style buildings.

Above the town, on Zipa hill, is the renowned Salt Cathedral.

The Salt Cathedral is an underground church built inside a salt mine. From the outdoor Ceremonial Square, you enter and descend through the mines into the sacred Cathedral by a series of tunnels.

The underground Cathedral features:

• A huge Sanctuary with a large cross, balconies and a replica of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” carved in salt.

• Separate chapels for the 14 Stations of the Cross that depict the Passion of Jesus Christ.

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Si usted va a estar más de un par de días en Bogotá, recomiendo muy especialmente el viaje a la pequena y agradable ciudad de Zipaquirá.

Zipaquirá tiene 48 kilómetros, es una ciudad encantadora, localizada al norte de Bogotá. La plaza mayor esta rodeada por viejos edificios de estilo Colonial español.

En la Colina denominada Zipa, esta localizada la renombrada Catedral de Sal.

La Catedral de Sal es una iglesia subterránea construida dentro de una mína de sal. De la plazoleta al aire libre usted entra y desciende por la mina atraves de una serie de túneles hasta llegar a la sagrada Catedral.

Las caracteristicas de Catedral subterránea:

• Hay un Santuario enorme con una cruz grande, balcones y una replica de “La Creación de Adán” de Michelangelo esculpido en sal.

• Hay diferentes Capillas que simboliza las 14 Estaciones de la Crucifixion de Jesus Cristo.

The Big Day and the Catedral de Sal

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:03:53 PST

Zipaquira, Colombia>, Oct 08, 2007

I pretty much spent the morning cleaning up bits and pieces of the house and waiting for other people to get organised. As I didn´t have much to do myself I just tried to keep out of the way until the shower was free.

It was a complete fiasco! Janneth warned me that Colombians are crazy and always late and I have to say she was right - I have never seen anything like it. The wedding was supposed to start at 4pm sharp (so the invitations said, in an effort to encourage timeliness in the locals). Unfortunately the bridal party only arrived at the church to start getting set up at 3.55pm! We found that the catering people had completely ignored our instructions and set up the tables across both rooms - one was supposed to be for the ceremony, set up to create an aisle, and the other was for the reception. There was band equipment taking up half of one room, no aisle, in fact no chairs set up at all, the red carpet (by some miracle) had actually been delivered but was sitting in the middle of the foyer and noone realised what it was until half an hour later. There was an arch to be set up at the beginning of the red carpet.

Fortunately, only a sum total of about four guests had actually paid attention to the invite and turned up on time. The other 50-odd guests sort of wandered in some time later, as they chose, not really too concerned. If it had been my wedding I would have been ropable but fortunately, Janneth had expected as much and told her mother not to come to the church until Janneth called her.

The pastors that were doing the actual marriage ceremony didn´t turn up until 5 minutes to 5!

After the ceremony - it turned out the band equipment was so a very song could be sung at the beginning - we went next door to try and organise the table settings. Nobody had actually written down table groupings and because the catering company had set up the tables incorrectly we couldn´t even have the right people at the head table.

What I really couldn´t get over though was the fact that some guests, who had confirmed their attendance the night before, simply didn´t turn up. At least 10 of the 50-odd guests simply didn´t show. And Janneth had already paid for 60 meals the week before so there was nothing we could do about it.

The New Zealanders were shaking our heads in absolute amazement at how rude it was to not turn up to a wedding where someone had paid for you to be there and you had confirmed - twice.

Anyway, it was a lovely ceremony and Lucila and Willy were very happy. Tons and tons of photos were taken - as you can imagine with everybody having digital cameras. The whole thing seemed to be the opposite way around from New Zealand - after the ceremony and the greeting of the guests, we had the speeches, the Mariachis, the cutting of the cake and the first dance. After all that, they served the dinner. And pretty much straight after the dinner, all the guests left and it was all over.

The Mariachis were awesome. They are a group of live singers who get paid per song to come and perform for people. I think traditionally a man would pay mariachis to serenade his wife/girlfriend/lover/etc. but now they are paid to sing anywhere. Apparently it has always been a dream of Janneth´s mother to have mariachis sing to her and Janneth had wanted to organise it for the wedding but didn´t know a reputable band (plus they are quite expensive). Anyway, in the end Lucila´s matron of honour, Irene, organised the mariachis and they were amazing. They all turn up in formal mexican outfits with huge sombreros and guitars. The group that performed at the wedding had two singers, male and female, and four or five people in total (not sure how many exactly). Lucila was rapt which was great and the fiesta was wonderful.

Unfortunately for me, after lunch around midday I started getting stomach cramps. I thought it was just stress but by the time the wedding was over I was in a lot of pain, and Janneth was asking me whether I wanted to go to the hospital. They rushed me home, propped me up in bed, fed me some herbal remedies and sat by my bedside looking after me. It was very nice. In the end I fished out my drugs from New Zealand and took some buscopan. I think it made me nauseous because I felt really ill all night, although it did reduce the stomach cramps to manageable. We were discussing what could have ben the culprit and eventually settled on the re-heated lasagna the night before!

The horrible thing was we had already paid to go to Zipaquira very early the next day by train and when we were woken up by Willy at about 6.30am Sunday morning I ached all over, had absolutely NO energy and could barely get out of bed. I dragged myself through the day which was the train trip to Zipaquira and included a visit to the famous salt cathedral which is an old salt mine (four or five hundred years old I think) which is now a tourist attraction and huge cathedral. They actually hold sermons and masses in there - there was one on while we went throgh. In spite of the fact that I felt really unwell the whole day (and had to take more buscopan) and we couldn´t understand what the guide was saying (we´re used to it now!) it was quite an amazing experience and a definite must in Colombia. It is labyrinthine and dark but the salt caverns are immense and the carvings breathtaking. The whole day, including train trip, bus transfers, entrance to the cathedral, return train trip and lunch, cost about 52000 pesos - $35 NZD.

We were exhausted when we got home and I slept in the next morning until 9.30. I´m much better today - still had to take some buscopan but the cramps are much reduced and should be gone tomorrow.

It sounds like we´re going to Girardot (about four hours travel away) for three days, possibly tomorrow morning. The idea is to go somewhere hot where it is not raining and sit by a pool and relax.
The rain has started here (This is the beginning of the rainy season). It has rained Sunday and Monday but the great thing is it´s not cold!

Cathedral de Sal

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 05:39:36 PST

Zipaquira, Colombia>, Sep 06, 2007

We barely slept last night as there was some part going on next door which was quite amusing (especially when they started singing along to some English hits by artists such as Michael Jackson)!

We slept in a little too late (9am) again and were on the road to get to Zipaquira which is a town about 30km away and takes about 1.5hrs to get to due to the traffic in Bogota. We were the only turistas on the bus which was an interesting experience that´s for sure! But we did OK. The bus was packed and we had been on it for about 45mins and were both a bit nervous thinking we had past our stop-off point as we had to change buses at one of the many stations. A large guy who was hovering over me then asked us where we were going as we must have looked lost! He spoke no English but we showed him and he nodded his head and said something in Spanish to us and smiled. When we did get to the stop the lady behind me tapped me on the shoulder and pointed, signalling that this is where we get off as she must have overheard us. People in Colombia are too nice! I love it, but that was really only the start of it all.

Once off we had no idea where to get the next bus so tried communicating with the one of the Policemen (which we failed to mention in the last blog - but there are heaps of Policia around, about 4 to each small bus station which is practically just a glorified bus stop. Also, something Dad will appreciate - the buses are about twice as long with this join in the middle so it can move. I can´t quite describe it properly but hopefully will get a picture before we leave.

Now, getting back to it.... so, this Policemen spoke NO English, and kept smiling at us because he was trying to signal something. In the end he waved his hand to follow him and we did and got straight on the bus. Another weird experience. There is the bus driver and another person who gets off the bus and tries to get people on the bus until it is full and once we are on the road then they collect the money. Once we finally got to Zipaquira (and it looked terribly dodgey too by the way, I wasn´t keen to get off the bus!) some girl spoke to us and soon figured out we wanted to go to the Salt Cathedral and she lead us the way which was really nice. We tried a little conversation and she spoke a little English. From what I can understand she used to work there and her name was Paula. She showed us the centre (well I think that´s what she said) and we were soon at the entranda to the Catherdral de Sal (Salt Cathedral).

The Salt Cathedral is an underground cathedral that used to be a salt mine (well actually it is still mined, but just not where the cathedral has been carved out). We had a one hour tour and since it was in English we were the only ones on it which was actually really nice! It was pretty amazing, as you will see in the photos and we got down to about 180m below ground. They also have 2 musuem´s there, of which we only had enough time to see one (as we needed to get back to Bogota before dark as apparently it´s dangerous).

We practically starved all day as we had only some chocolate wafers to eat! We were rushing around so much we didn´t have time to eat, so maybe we will lose weight!! We went out for tea again tonight and it was quite nice, although it´s pretty hard to order somethig you have no idea what it actually is! Last night we had this weird meal which I ate, but particularily don´t want to force down again. It consisted fo papa (mashed potato), something that was like carrot, fried banana, carne (meat) and spagetti. All cheap as!

A few things we haven´t mentioned:

You can´t flush toilet paper down the toilet here, it has to go in a bin
Those on motorbikes have to wear a vest-type thing with their numberplate on
Police... did we mention they are everywhere! And outside the actual police station they have big guns.... exciting!!
There seem to be no road rules. We thoght Bangkok was bad... the roads are narrow and they toot to try and get in
The Police cars have about 5 different tunes, which they like to try out as often as possible and just to get the traffic moving!

We are off to San Gil tomorrow, trying to get on a bus at about 8-9am, the journey takes us about 6-7hrs so hopefully it´s on a comfy bus! We shall see!

Missing everyone so much :)

Underground cathedral

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:10:36 PST

Zipaquira, Colombia>, Jun 12, 2007

OK now this was weird. We went out to this little town to see an underground cathedral built into a salt mine. Yep thats right. And it was so strange and surreal and huge!!

The tunnel took us down into the dark caves and each `room`opened up into a cave with huge crosses and praying areas and stuff. At the end of the tunnel, it opened up into a massive cathedral, just like a normal cathedral with an incredibly high ceiling and it even had row after row of pews for worshippers. Just to get an idea of how big the main cathedral area is it is 75m long, 18m high and can hold 8400 people. And all this is undergroud! It was a bit creepy though with so many dark corners. Several horror films came flooding back.

How on earth they made an underground cathedral like that was just amazing. The walls glintered as the light reflected iff the salt crystal. Very strange and an amazing experience.