and soon came upon a stone cross in front of
a cavern-like excavation: the first of the
chapels. A dimly lit passageway leads past
the Stations of the Cross and then to three
other chapels. The immense Salt Cathedral
can accommodate 3000 guests. It’s quite
impressive and usually makes it into those
global lists of places you must see.
Continuing toward Villa de Leyva, a second
bus took us to the town of Chiquinquira
which is considered to be the religious capital
The main chapel in Zipaquira’s Salt Cathedral
of Colombia. We wandered the main square,
visited the Basilica, found a coffee shop to
check out the local scene and eventually found the bus to take us to our final destination. It didn’t help
when we thought we had to travel to the town of Tunja to change buses, yet again. Whenever a taxi
stopped near us, we got the name of the town wrong and asked the driver about ‘trucha”—which
means ‘trout”. No wonder it took us a bit longer to reach Villa de Leyva that day!.
Villa de Leyva is a small colonial town that boasts the largest cobbled town square in Colombia.
Bordering Plaza Mayor is a 17th Century church along with shops, restaurants, cafes, and many places
for locals and tourists to sit around with their Club Colombia or Poker beer (or many cases, an ice
cream) and just ‘hang out’. In addition, there are very interesting side streets with small hotels,
restaurants, museums, souvenir shops, cobblestone streets and colonial architecture, so it’s quite a
beautiful and at the same time, laid back town.
Plaza Mayor in Villa de Leyva is said to be the largest town squares in all of Colombia