Colombia’s Otherworldly Cathedral of Salt

Well, today we're going on a little tour of a salt cathedral, which is actually a uh a salt mine, which is no longer in use, which has been turned into a cathedral. It's about uh 200 200 m uh below ground. Uh we uh we stopped here at a little town called Zakaria and in Colombia. It was about 2 and a half hours from Bogota. And uh Lisa is getting some coffee and I'm walking around the plaza. And uh we can see how beautiful this plaza is. Certainly the uh got the church and getting ready for Christmas, which is obviously a big thing here just like it is all over Colombia and Puerto Rico. But we got the the typical Spanish uhish square plaza little shops around it. I'm going to be here for just a little bit before we get to get our tickets and head down into the Salt Cathedral, which uh it's supposedly like just absolutely out of this world. number one marvel of Columbia. Here it is, the salt cathedral. We have to go through some uh some tiendas first. >> So, here we are at the Plaza Dome Monero, the plaza of the miners. Uh the history of this mine, uh let's go down down through here is that in 1930, the miners wanted a a small little chapel, you know, down in the uh in the mine. And they finally they finally finished that in 1952. And then in uh 1992 they closed it because of structural issues. Um then in 1995 you know what they did was uh they they re rebuilt this into this sort of this uh uh this sort of attraction that uh we're going to see here today. So that's uh the history of this. And let's uh let's go. And here we go down. We're allowed to touch the walls. >> Who? >> Wow. >> And you can touch the the wall and you can see how it changes. >> All right. You can see that. Look at that. I don't know how to follow this thing ahead of us. >> Up here is a light show of flags. Oh, it actually shows up better on the camera than it does in looking at it. >> Down here they've got the stations of the cross. How far and put it on. >> Wonder if a lot of people come here. I'm sure they must on Good Friday. Station 10. >> Jesus is stripped of his garments. We got a dome here. Well, that's cool. There's actually seats down there. >> So, this is the balcony we're in. >> So, we're in the balcony of the church. Seats down there. >> We can go down and see the next light show from >> I love the way they lit up the salt walls up here. Wow. Yeah. Look at the ceiling here. >> It's incredible. This is just incredible here. Holy heck. with the music and everything because I want to see that entire thing >> down in the All of these were done by different sculptors. See a little tag here. >> There's a nativity scene. >> Look at this. Like a wall of salt. Okay, this is the central nave or the life nave of the main cathedral >> except that I don't see the four columns. >> This is the baptismal font. >> And when they fill it with water, the water is salty. >> Wonder why it is. >> Probably water. They probably pump the water from up there. >> Yeah. This is the world's largest salt cross that we saw earlier >> when the show is. >> But looking back, this is where we were. Looking down on this again, this ceilings here are just incredible. Well, and right outside the ca the cathedral itself, you can get some ice cream in stores. >> I'm going to go in. >> Yeah. Here we are in the shopping mall. Frappe. Frappe. This place is incredible. >> Can't escape the shopping here. >> Jail for the camel robbers. the sculpture in salt. This is salt memories, I think. Still on our way out. Never going to make it out. >> This is incredible how much shopping is down here. It's >> incredible. I didn't think we'd want to spend time shopping. All right. A little train here or actually a little bus. It's a bus actually. They call it a train, >> but it's really a truck. Mercedes is the case, right? So Lisa, what did you think of the Salt Cathedral here? It was pretty incredible. >> Oh my god, it was it was well well well beyond my expectations. >> Much bigger than I thought it would be. >> Yeah. I thought, you know, I just go in there, you know, a couple little entryways and and and things, but uh my gosh, I don't know how long we in there. Almost two hours. More than two hours >> and uh we could have stayed a little longer for of course for the shopping, >> but >> well, I mean there wasn't much more than we were expecting. We were expecting just a cathedral. Instead, there were all the different parts of the cathedral. But I mean, we there was a whole tour we didn't even see about just mining. And we stumbled upon the emerald mining portion of it. And then there's a whole mall in the bottom. We could have had a meal there, too. There's restaurant, everything, >> you know. So, I mean, it took us uh two and a half hours to get here from uh >> And what did we pay for this? >> I think we paid I think we paid $40 for the entry fee. Now, whether that's right or not or, you know, I don't know, but uh I'm going to look that up later whether we got we got taken advantage of or or what because we didn't buy our tickets at the regular ticket office and bought them, you know, someplace else. So, you know, we'll uh either way either way. So, anyhow, if you're in Bogota, definitely take these at least the Salt Cathedral tour. >> Yeah, we definitely it's worth the uh the effort to get here. And until the next time, may your suitcase always be messy. And don't forget to subscribe to our channel and ring that bell to be notified of upcoming videos.