juicyshoot travels

Juicy Shoot Around the World

world@juicyshoot.com

21 hours is a long time on a bus... Well that's how long it took us to reach Bogota, Colombia's capital city, from hot and sunny Cartagena! We're still not sure whether it is the length of the trip, or the colder climate, but we both felt weak when we arrived there. Then we realized Bogota lies at an altitude of about 2600m and it is quite common to suffer from altitude sickness when you get there! That's exactly what was happening to us! After being sea-sick, then land-sick, we were now being altitude-sick! You can't say we haven't tried everything...

Anyway it took us a good half day to recover and get use to the cold and the altitude... Meanwhile we still managed to explore the lively city, the Plaza Bolivar, the cute little streets surrounded by mountains and we especially spent some time in the magnificent Donacion Botero, showcasing splendid paintings and sculptures by Botero himself as well as a few Matisse and Picasso!

In spite of altitude sickness we also managed to stay busy at night...

Notably we had an unforgettable evening playing bowling in the most old-school place where a dude picks up the pins for you and where you score yourself manually rather than being all computerized! Without cheating, Quentin obviously won... Hahahaha!!!

We were also lucky to walk past a sort of street party with spectacular fireworks right in the street where we were staying!

However our main reason for coming to Bogota was to visit the Catedral de Sal, 50km from there and we were far from being disappointed by it!

We first took the modern bus TransMilenio and then jumped on a bus heading to the cute little town of Zipaquira. In between Quentin could obviously not resist a cheesy arepa...

Anyway we walked up a steep hill, had a break, walked more and down a tunnel which led to the old salt mine that had been turned into a Salt Cathedral and were really impressed, to say the least! The tunnel led us into the mine for about 750m, passing amazing little chapel-like rooms, each symbolizing a different stage in Jesus' life and subtly lit... Through a long series of tunnels, we finally reached the bottom of the mine and were astounded by the beauty of the huge space (75m long and 18m high) all in salt! That was truly unique...

That same evening, another long night bus journey awaited us and we headed towards the south of the country...

03/02/2009

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