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March 22, 2005
A salt sanctuary deep inside the mountain
The walls glittered as we walked through the dark tunnels at Zipaquira, to the cathedral 180 meters underground, where the air is cool and smells the way the ocean smells in my hometown, the way seaweed smells when it dries on the sand. It was dark, except for the lights that hauntingly illuminated the angels and crosses along the way, in the 14 small chapels that represent the Stations of the Cross. If you touched one of them and sucked the tip of your finger, you would see that these angels, crosses and, in fact, the entire cathedral are made of salt, chiseled out of a mine that still yields 600 tons of salt a day.
Zipaquira is a pueblo lost in time, a place where locals move around in horses, where the Colonial buildings sit untouched in the Colombian savannah. Irma, my hostess, and her daughter, Maria Fernanda, joined me on this day trip. We drove for about an hour, 50 km away of Bogota, until we reached the winding road that leads to the cathedral. There were army soldiers and police officers in every kilometer, rifles hanging from their shoulders, their eyes trained on the cars that drove past. Yesterday was a holiday here, so the roads were packed with travelers. Many took the entire week off, for Thursday and Friday are holidays too in observation of Semana Santa, or holy week. Flooding highways with soldiers and cops is the solution President Uribe found to prevent kidnappings. It is, then, fairly safe to drive in Colombia these days, so long as you stick to the main roads and travel before the sun goes down.
Posted by Fernanda Santos at March 22, 2005 12:04 PM