So after my early arrival in Bogota I headed to Platypus hostel in the La Candelaria to meet the second familiar face of the trip: Freemo, of Betfair ´fame´.
I only really had a day to see the sights in Bogota, as we were planning to head north the next day, so logically decided to head to neighbouring town Zipaquira and just ditch Bogota completely.
I´m sure Bogota is lovely, but the Salt Cathedral in Zipaquira had been talked up by many a traveller and for good reason.
The ´cathedral´ (technically not one as there´s no bishop, but it does function as a church as rather incredibly there is regular mass on sundays) is housed inside a huge rock salt mine, which is still actively mined. I can´t remember the exact stat but the actual cathedral (which is impressively big and hosts concerts, weddings and such like) represents a tiny, tiny percent of the actual mine. There are 14 different ´stations of the cross´(one shown below) representing different passages in the Bible. Don´t ask me which one is below, lets say it´s his resurrection because that´s the good bit.
Anyway, it´s spectacularly lit, but lest you get carried away with the beauty and awe of it all, there is of course the ubiquitous snack stands (fresh popcorn? In church??) and general touristy crap available for purchase (all lit by the same majestically beautiful light, natch).
That night, despite it being a Monday, a public holiday and literally almost nothing being open we decided to go out for a few drinks. So Freemo, Dave (an American guy from the hostel) and another guy (how terrible, can´t remember his name) and I attempted to find a place, any place we could sit and get pleasantly drunk.
This came in the shape of the ´Doors Rock´ bar, which was subtley painted with a huge union jack on the door with a big neon sign above it, just in case you missed it.
Apart from the long haired Colombian owner (who had a bit of a Stones vibe about him and was casually pouring himself shots of rum at the bar) and the girl at the bar (his wife?), we were the only people in there, but they played some great tunes from the 80´s and 90´s and after he´d worked his way through half the bottle of rum, the owner grew increasingly generous and started forcefeeding us shots of his rum. ´Forcing´ might not be strictly accurate, but by the 4th or 5th one I was starting to wish he was a little LESS free with it. I think his wife thought the same as she watched him pour the meagre profits from the night down our throats.
Next day we said farewell to Dave (and the other guy) and headed for Villa de Leyva, a pretty colonial town a few hours away. After a confusing 30 minutes wandering around the bus terminal and asking multiple people for assistance, we found out we needed to hail down the bus OUTSIDE the terminal on the main road as it drove by(of course, how stupid of us). This wasn´t as easy as it sounded as it was absolutely pissing down with rain, I was in flip flops and we could barely see a metre in front of us.
Managed to get on the bus though, only problem was at the other end, Freemo realised that one of his hiking boots had managed to detach itself from his backpack in the melee...not ideal when one will be doing a 4 day trek in 2 weeks time.
Moving swiftly on from that blip, Villa de Leyva was beautiful, is home to the biggest - and emptiest - main square in Colombia (see photo gallery) and all the streets are still cobbled, which basically makes driving (or cycling) anywhere a rather slow and sometimes painful process.
We hired bikes the next day and set off with the sun shining to check out the local scenery - pozos de azul (blue pools), mountains, weird 1900´s theme parks and the like. Only problem was, between me leading the way and Freemo carrying the map we managed to miss the turn off and ended up going 3km past where we needed to. Uphill. I don´t really think this is my fault as anyone that knows me knows that my sense of direction can not be trusted and therefore can´t be held responsible...
Thankfully the return downhill was much more rapid, but by the time we found the turn off (which was of course glaringly obvious the second time around) the skies had opened and it was raining heavily.
Having chosen the hostel from the guidebook in part because it mentioned a rather tempting sounding ´wood fired pizza oven´ I was a LITTLE disappointed to find out when we returned sodden and cold that actually this did not mean that they cooked pizza on the premises, but that they provided the oven and the wood, and you could cook yourself a pizza should you so desire! Little bit misleading there Footprint, even if the description was correct in a literal sense!
