It was much of the same as we headed south from Mompox towards Bucaramanga which was just going to be a stopover - no plans to go and see anything there when we arrived. However immediately next to our accommodation was a little park with the ever more ubiquitous Botero sculpture. This one had a little plaque saying it had visited Milan and St Tropez. However it didn't say why the sculpture had been evicted from these two homes.
With not much to photograph scenery wise Françoise busied herself with other things. In the UK there are those road signs warning you of imminent danger, as a deer with massive antlers is about to jump out at you without warning. It's similar here in Colombia. We have been warned about anteaters, armadillos, monkeys, crocodiles/alligators/cayman, turtles/terrapins, foxes, other rodent like creatures, iguanas, snakes, sloths and others. And we were about to say that, just like our experience in the UK where we had never seen any sort of deer jump out at us, we had a large iguana crossing the road that wanted to get to the fence post on the other side.
Our next touristic stopover was Villa de Leyva. This small colonial town has a wonderful cobbled plaza and everything is pretty original. The architecture around the plaza is also interesting with perpendicular roads running off from each corner, again all pretty and well preserved. The cobbles are unworked stones and it is pretty hard to walk on them without turning an ankle. But the most incredible part of this small town plaza is its size; at 14,000m2, or 120m x 120m, it is the 4th biggest square in South America and bigger than London's biggest square, Trafalgar Square. Apparently the town was built to keep retired Spanish soldiers happy and the plaza was so grand for military reasons. It was very quiet when we were there; no problems finding a hotel, or anywhere to eat. The hotel told us it was a totally different story at weekends and Christmas/New Year as the town was a romantic getaway for Bogotanos. Oh, and there just happened to be a parrot sat on a fence on the way to the plaza...
Our last stop before Bogota, from where we would be leaving Colombia, was Zipaquira. We visited an ex salt mine here. What was amazing is that an underground cathedral has been built in the salt mine. It is 200m underground. Not a small, token Cathedral but a full blown one that has been carved out of the rock like some sort of negative building process. It even had salt crystal chandeliers! It was truly magnificent as a sacred place, architecturally, artistically and engineering wise. We visited the cathedral on our own and not part of any organised tour; there were things we didn't understand due to our insufficient Spanish about this cathedral actually being situated 60m below another underground cathedral built in the 1950's that had to be closed for safety reasons.
Onwards to Bogota...
