Bogota and the Salt Mines (sounds like a Harry Potter book!)

After 30 hours on a bus and we arrived in Bogota. 30 hours you say but why is that? Cartagena is only about 16 hours away, well I will tell you... Another part of Colombia that we had been told was beautiful and really worth going to was Santa Marta. Unfortunattally the town was 5 hours north of Cartagena and a bit too much out of our way. So we got to bus to Bogota only to find the ocean on the wrong side for 5 bloody hours. And where was our first stop yes you have it Bloody Santa Marta. So after the 10 hour detour we were finally on our way to Bogota. Thank god for sleeping tablets.

The scotts Angela and Craig that we met in Cartagena were in the hostel next door. We felt a bit bad cause every time we spoke to them it turns out that they spent a lot more money on things that we both had done, our flight from Colombia was 1/2 the price of theirs, our rooms were cheaper and our bus from Cartagena was too. It wouldn´t have been too bad but they were really focused on their money and missing things out so they could streach out what they had saved, saying that, they had double what we had. We have now devised a philosiphy after meeting them. We (within reason) will not miss out on someting great because of the money it costs and then when the money is gone we will simply go home having great memories (of which our sand bording adventure is a testement to but more on that in another post).

Our main activity in Bogota was the Salt Cathedral I was really looking forward to this after seeing Helen´s amazing photo of it. Just outside Bogota is a massive Salt Mine and for some reason or another (probably available on google) they decided to build a Cathedral inside it. So we set out on a cold and drizzly day to the Mine. We have been really lucky on our days out always having great sunshine apart from gettin home from the volcano bording, again we were lucky the weather was bad outside so we didn´t mind going underground. We waited for our Spanish speaking guide (great) and were looking at a huge cross carved from salt rock for each of the 14 Stations of the Cross. These were pretty cool but once you have seen 6 salt crosses that is about enough. Then we came into the beautifully carved statues, angels and the full nativity scene and a full church it was amazing. It has pews and an alter and everything. I think they use it for special masses sometimes, it would be amazing to see it full and used for the purpose it was made. And incase you are wondering yes we did lick it and it was salty!!!

Our other day out was to the police museum it was really cool. The museum revolves around Pablo Escobar who was a massive Drug barron (kinda the first one) who was so rich that Forbes magazine listed him as the 7th richest man in the world in 1989 now that is rich from drugs. He is responsible for killing 30 judges, 457 police, and other deaths at a rate of 20 each day for 2 months! Now that is a lot of killing. We were shown around the place by a young Army recruit (all boys in Colombia have to do service) he was working in the museum showing people round, he said that he prefered this to what some of the other recruits have to do, namely go out and fight the guerillas in the jungle. I would pick the museum too. He showed all the exhibitions relating to Pablo and told us all about how the US helped to capture and kill him, funny how they help when the drugs are running into their country isn´t it? They also had a huge cashe of arms that was donated to them by Germany after World War 2. I thought that was a bit strange but El Floato liked posing with them.