Catedral de Sal

Oh hey there. It's been a while, I know. I've been far from the internet for quite some time, but found some time to sneak in a little post to remind you all that I returned from Colombia almost 4 weeks ago now! Time flies sometimes!

Down to business, this post is about my visit to the Salt Cathedral in Zipaquirá, a town just about 30 minutes north of Bogotá. I went with Zayrho, his mother Adriana, and one of her friends. It was the first time being there for all of them, even though Briceño is just a 15 minute drive away! First of all, "What the heck is a salt cathedral??" is probably on your mind. This is a place that is unique to the entire world-- on of a kind. I watched a video that explained all about it while I was there, but basically, this underground giant pocket of salt was created by the movement of the earth due to tectonic plates, after the ocean had receded from the area (hence the huge amount of salt). When miners looking for emeralds (las esmeraldas in Spanish) and gold in the area, they discovered that all of the earth in the area was made of salt. They began to excavate through the salt, creating tunnels, rooms, and passages. Eventually, someone decided to build what is basically a cathedral with an altar and everything underground in this place. The coolest thing is that everywhere you look around you there-- up, down, to your left or your right-- it's carved and chiseled salt. There was a little bit of marble every once in a while, of course which was brought in later, but basically everything else was salt. Here is what the walls looked like around the tunnel where there was a lot of moisture and water running:

Another thing that was super cool about this place was the story that was told as you walked through the passages, on your way to the altar. The story of Jesus' passion was told in 15 stages along the way. Each station had a cross of some sort, either carved out of or made out of salt, that were supposed to visually represent that point of Jesus' passion. This was my favorite of the representations:

There was also this very famous reflecting pool a little passed the altar way down underground. It's almost hard to tell if this is a mirror, water, or glass that shows something down below! The cool part is that it's only a couple centimeters of water that allow this effect to occur. So cool!

Now for the altar (really hard to get a good picture of because of the lighting in there!). By the way, they actually hold church services in here every Sunday and perform wedding ceremonies here from time to time:

And in front of the altar is this beautiful marble carved replica of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam... kinda reminded me of our trip to Rome!! :)

I'll see what else I can scrounge together about my trip to Colombia to share with you. Keep posted and cross your fingers that I can keep my motivation up! hahaha I also have a life update that could be worth putting on here for those of you interested in my travels. More details to come. Until then....

Catch me later :)

Welcome To The Jungle

The title gives a small hint of what I'm going to tell you all about... Villa de Leyva, a beautiful town a few hours North of Bogotá, was the destination for me and the De San Vicente family a week and a half ago. This place is amazing! After a long and windy road, the car kicking up some dust, we arrived at our hotel, called Hotel Getsemaní. Here's a before picture, when we stopped for lunch along the way (and you can see the wonderful family I got to live with for 2 weeks... From left to right: Zayrho, Me, Mauricio, Lirkhanna, Zharim):

And here is a sneak peak at Hotel Getsemaní:

So back to that title... if you want to see what the jungle in central Colombia looks like, here you go!

So what fun adventures did we have in Villa de Leyva? Well let me tell you. We started off by taking a walk around, looking for the eco-travel agency that offered tours through the nearby jungle. We found an... odd... fellow who gave us the schpeal about the tours and about what to expect, though I couldn't really follow everything that was going. We decided that we would disembark the next morning at 10am for... well, I wasn't sure yet. I knew we were going to some waterfalls and that was just about all. We continued on our walk, had dinner, and visited the plaza, which is actually the largest plaza in Colombia. Here is us there:

After dinner, Zayrho and I headed out for some wine at a Spanish themed restaurant/bar and became all nostalgic about Spain, then headed back to Gestemaní fairly early for a good night's sleep. I had no clue what the next day would hold.

We had breakfast around 9 the next morning then headed back to the eco-tour agency to head out. We met our tour guide and followed him and his comrades into the jungle, about a 20 minute drive outside of Villa de Leyva. When we arrived, we immediately saw our initial adventure... zipline down to where the river and waterfalls were. Each of us took turns flying down from the hill we were on, meeting down at the bottom. What a blast!! Once we all arrived at the bottom, our guide led us to our next adventure... repelling down a beautiful waterfall! Once again, we each took our turns down and then hiked back up. Here is Mauricio on his way down:

After we all had our turn down the waterfall, we continued on to our third adventure... a hike through the jungle, along the river to visit three more beautiful waterfalls. Here's the whole family together (Adriana, Lirkhanna, Mauricio, Zharim, Me, Zayrho) at waterfall number 2:

We continued on to waterfall three, then headed back to the hotel for a quick shower and dinner (which was absolutely delicious in another restaurant in Villa de Leyva). We were there just for the weekend, but it was a great bonding experience and an extreme adventure for all of us.

Catch me later :)

Exploring Bogotá

I definitely have yet to see even the smallest percentage of this huge city, Bogotá... with 12 million people, this city has about 20x as many people as Seattle! It's the capital of Colombia and it's clear by the size and amount of people everywhere. I've had the chance to explore some of the city, walking around in the streets, eating in various restaurants, visiting museums, listening to music here and there, getting my groove on, and more. I wanted to give you a brief tour of what I've seen with a few photos and descriptions.

This photo is of a reservoir outside of a restaurant that we had lunch at. It's actually outside of Bogotá about one hour (North), which we came across on our way to Villa de Levya (a post to come about that beautiful place soon!). The restaurant sat on this reservoir, where they caught the trout, trucha en Español, that we enjoyed for lunch. There was also a farm with animals such as chickens, roosters, and a llama, which surely supplied some of the food that we enjoyed during that meal:

For those of you who read my last post, Salsa at Galería Café Libro, you'll recognize this vaguely. Zayrho and I had a great Salsa night here last week, dancing, drinking mojitos, and taking in the true Colombia Salsa style. It's on Calle 93 in Bogotá, a place that's fun and super nice and clean for Bogotá:

On a day excursion in the city with Carol and Hugo (a wonderful, fun, and sweet couple close to the De San Vicente family), Zayrho and I enjoyed some beer and coca-cola at this intimate little bar, Merlin, where we enjoyed some live music by candle and firelight. It was a beautiful little place with everything made of wood and fun knick-knacks:

On the same day excursion, we toured Bolívar Square that is said to represent the four powers of Colombia, one on each side: The Palace of Justice (Supreme Court), The National Capitol (Colombian Congress), Vase House (Independence Museum), and pictured here, the Primate Cathedral/Holy Chapel. Why Bolívar Square? Simón Bolívar was a huge political independence leader of the early 19th century in South America. Bolívar led Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Panama, Ecuador, and Peru to independence and is honored in all of those countries. You go, Simón!

What else to see in Bogotá? The world famous Museo del Oro (Gold Museum). The history at the Gold Museum is incredible! I learned about the many indigenous tribes of Colombia (before Spanish conquest) and the stories of the tribes being invaded by the Spaniards. My favorite story is one that you might be familiar with: The Lost City of Gold. El Dorado, anyone? As the story goes, El Dorado, the chief of the Muisca tribe, covered himself with gold dust and rowed out to the middle of Lake Guatavita (in Colombia) to sacrifice a ton of emeralds and gold to the indian goddess Guatavita, as was typical for each new chief of the tribe. The story evolved as the Spanish and other Europeans became more greedy to find the gold, turning into a whole city made of gold under the deep lake. They even attempted to drain Lake Guatavita to find the treasure. Though many pieces of gold jewelry and more were found at the bottom of the lake, the Lost City of Gold was never found. Here is a nice little piece that the museum held (oh, and D.C. is the equivalent of A.D. or C.E. in English):

After a long day exploring the Gold Museum and walking around, we stopped for Chocolate (which is hot chocolate to you and me) and a few deserts. I found that even though I love most all Colombia food I've tried, I'm a little bit more picky about the desserts. They are almost always super sweet and too much for me to handle:

Remember my night of the Aguardiente that I mentioned in my second blog about Colombia? Well, this is that night. Here is me with Zayrho and Sebastián at a little blue bar in Bogotá, enjoyed a group playing live music (just a little group, playing at the table next to us and singing), lots of dancing, and drinking of that little bottle, the orange one on the table behind Sebastián, that led to my incredible awful hangover the next day. At least that night was really fun!

Here is an outside shot of the Museo del Oro (I think I described enough above):

This is the view from top of the hill in the De San Vicente's neighborhood. It's so beautiful! Situated on a golf course, which you can see down at the bottom with the little houses, this neighborhood in Briceño is surrounded by beautiful hills. Did I mention that the elevation of this city is around 5,000 ft? Well, that made for a heavy-breathing walk to the top of this hill... whew!!

More to come of this beautiful and inspiring city...

...catch me later! :)

Salsa at Galería Café Libro

Learning and dancing Salsa (and other Latin styles) was one thing in Salamanca... here it's the real thing! Well, at least Colombian style. Last week, Zayrho and I headed to Bogotá for a concert of the Salsa band La Conmoción. Amazing!!!! There was a cover to get into the Salsa club called Galería Café Libro, but it was well worth the 15,000 Colombian pesos each (which is only about $6 in the US).

We enjoyed some appetizers, mojitos (yummmmm... remember that Salsa comes from Cuba, and so do Mojitos!!), live music by La Conmoción, and lots of dancing. Here are a few pictures and a little video treat for you, so maybe you can feel like you were actually there:

And finally, what you've all been waiting for... the video! Galería Café Libro presents, on September 22, 2010... La Conmoción

Soooo much more to come, now that I have time since I've finished all of my Spain summer quarter homework and have plenty of time for blogging! :) ...and I have a lot to show about beautiful Colombia!

A special shout out to my Dad on his birthday! Happy birthday, Dad!!

...catch me later :)