Day 12-Salt Cathedral Tour

Today we took a tour to the Salt Cathedral.  It by far was one of our favorite days in Colombia.  We left the hotel at around 9am and headed to the town of Zipaquira.  For us this meant a nice scenic drive out of the city of Bogota and where there is minimal traffic.

The Salt Cathedral is litterally a church that is 500 feet below the ground in a cave and is completely made out of salt.  The mine is still an active salt mine below the church where they are actively pulling salt out of the mine.  We took many pictures but I don't think it truly did it justice.  They say this is one of Colombia's wonders of the world but after seeing and experiencing it, we really think it should be a wonder of the world!

We began our tour visiting the stations of the cross, illustrating the events of Jesus last journey.  They essentially made 14 small chapels each with a meaning showing the stations of the cross.

This picture is from one of the stations of the cross.  The cross is sunken because it represents one of the times when Jesus fell. 

The next picture is another picture from one of the stations of the cross.  This picture represents when Jesus died on the cross.  It is a see thru or empty cross because it is representing if you do not have god in your life your life will be empty or without meaning.  The light represents heaven.

The next couple of pictures are from the church.  The 1st two pictures are of the nativity scene in the church while the last two pictures are of the church-1st one is from the balcony and the second one is from the ground level of the church.

There were many other areas of the salt cathedral, like an entire area dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a room the sybolizes the Jordan River.

A couple side notes:  We have not heard anything else on the judicial strike except that the negotiations are worsening.  Our attorney was supposed to talk to us yesterday about it and then she moved the meeting to today and now she says tomorrow.  We know the US Embassy had a meeting today with all of the adoption attorney's so we are hoping to get an update.

We have also included a couple of random pictures from our last couple of days:

Picture of traffic-This is a minor traffic jam as usually you can touch the cars next to you.  We think it is quite funny that there are no lanes for cars, it is free will wherever you fit.  The motorcycles drive wherever they find room inbetween cars and with all of the traffic there are horses on the roads too.  Today on our way to the salt cathedral we got into a car accident.  John and I usually joke when we cross major roads whose side will get hit first.  Well today it was my side.  A big truck backed into our van.  It hit the driver side door and I was sitting right behind the driver.  Another weird thing is pedestrians do not have the right of way and they will litterally hit you if you cross in front of them.

The next two pictures are from yesterday's lunch with the kids.  We are still having a blast with the kids but L is challenging us a bit more.  I think she really thinks she is a princess so she is not liking that we are setting boundries with her.  Today we saw a couple of fits and she does have quite the scream.  She likes to pick on her brother and then get mad at him.  Today at the salt cathedral she called him stupid in spanish and told him she was going to beat him up!  She is quite fiesty for 32 pounds!