Posts Tagged ‘bogota’

People from Medellin say that the best part of Bogota is the road to Medellin. Whilst I wouldn’t go that far, Bogota definitely has its charms, I do sort of know what they mean. It is not a pretty city and the overwhelming feeling is one of chaos and crowding, it’s not a place to relax.

Ceiling, Catedral de Sal

Which is why, only 3 days after arriving we took a daytrip to Zipaquira, home of the Catedral de Sal, a church (having no bishop, it’s not officially a cathedral) constructed 200m below the surface in a disused saltmine.

Statues, Catedral de Sal

It feels very unreal, walking in the dark past alcoves lit up portraying the 14 Stations of the Cross, every element (including kneeling places) being carved right from the rock.

Main body, Catedral de Sal

The main nave does feel like a cathedral, it’s huge (can take up to 3,000 worshippers) and the illuminated sculptures and cross shining in the darkness add a mystical element absent from many actual cathedrals.

Statue, Catedral de Sal

So, from Bogota we spent a couple of days in lovely colonial Villa de Leyva, about 4 hours north. On the way I got my first taste of Colombian bus drivers. In the cold light of day it’s one thing to sit here typing away and say that they drive like lunatics. It’s quite another when you’re sliding around on your bus seat, anything that you’ve been stupid enough to leave on the floor is at the other end of the bus, knocking against the ankles of the nice little old lady in the front seat. I began to dread the downhill bits (of which there were a lot, Villa de Leyva is 700 metres lower than Bogota) because on cresting the hill, you would feel the bus surge forward and the driver would begin cackling demonically as the roadside shacks would begin to blur, parts of the bus started breaking off under the extreme strain with the wheel rims glowing red.

Ok, Ok so I’m exaggerating a little bit. However, if I thought it was bad on the way to Villa de Leyva, it was nothing compared to the road between Bogota and Medellin. We had to dog-leg back to the capital to get to Medellin, which meant a good 15 hour bus day, but they weren’t that uncomfortable so I wasn’t too bothered about it. We left Bogota and after 30 minutes or so began down a curvy mountain road. The scenery was beautiful, the road taking us through thick forest and mountains as far as the eye could see. And it went on for hours like this – literally. Down, then up, the down again, all the time with hairpin bends every 50 metres. This of course did nothing to stop our bus driver from overtaking lorries, sometimes 2 or 3 at a time. I’ve never seen so many lorries in all my life, and of course we had to overtake them all. On blind bends. I’ve also never seen so many vultures in my life, there were trees full of em, just sitting there, waiting… it wasn’t very reassuring.

Having spent a very nice Christmas and New Year with the family, yesterday I arrived in Bogota. One of the first things you I like to do when arriving in a new city is try to figure out roughly where things are and how to get around, so when Laura gave me a Tourist Map of Bogota, I had a flick through to see what was what.  The back of the map contains lots of useful information including the following advice about Street Addresses:

Moving around Bogota is easy. The two mountains Monserrate and Guadalupe are the reference point. The carreras (KR) run parallel to the mountains North-South, and numbers increase from East to West. The calles (CL) are perpendicular to the mountains, and numbers increase from South-North. A transversal (TR) is similar to a carrera, and adiagonal (DG) is similar to a calle. The avendias are denominated (AK) when the correspond to a carrera, and (AC) when they a correspond to a calle. The avenidas also can be distinguished by a name, for example: Avenida Cuidad de Quito.

Got it?