After a good night's camping just outside Villa de Leyva, Friday was just designed to be a drive day with a stopover in the evening at Honda. We were however given to choice of driving straight to Honda for a long day, or stopping off en route at this salt cathedral for a very long day. We opted for the very long day. Breakfast this morning with pancakes and fresh pineapple, and after taking down camp we departed at around 8.
The drive to Catedral de Sal took about 4 hours, although we kept ourselves amused by writing poems about each other which was funny. From what I can remember the cathedral is one of only 3 in the world to be made inside a salt mine, and had 14 separate chapels, going as deep as 180m. It was very interesting walking round the endless tunnels and seeing many illuminated crosses and narrow walkways. I did accidentally fart louder than expected in one of the chapels though which may have upset a couple of locals.
After exploring the salt cathedral, we went back to the truck where the people who didn't want to visit the cathedral had prepared lunch for us. We had ham and cheese toasties, with leftovers from the last two nights, fresh pineapple, and this lovely potato salad. I hope they're not expecting something as good when I prepare my meal soon. We're also getting really efficient at washing up now too, with our scrub, disinfect, rinse, then flap to dry system.
When we finished lunch we continued on although it was very slow as we were effectively on the outskirts of Bogota. Part of the drive today also took us above 2800m for the first time which is apparently when people sometimes start to feel the effects of altitude sickness. Everyone was fine though. When we finally negotiated Bogota we started decending rapidly down winding mountain roads, and the scenery was stunning, although we were soon driving in the clouds and couldn't see much.
Before long it got dark and the heavens just opened and we had another massive thunderstorm. Some of the lightning was so dramatic. To pass the time though we did play cards. We have now found out though that the truck isn't totally water tight.
We didn't arrive to Honda until about 8, and luckily it had stopped raining and we checked in no problems. It was after checking in that an even worse thunderstorm came, with some spectacular lightning and rumbles of thunder. The outside of my room flooded as well which wasn't great. Luckily I had bought dinner earlier, but some people who went to a nearby restaurant said that the lightning struck something and sent sparks through the restaurant which was meant to be a little scary. We even had a power cut but luckily it wasn't down for too long. I just stayed in my room as it was pretty horrendous, and I wanted an early night after 3 nights of camping before, and a further 3 nights of camping afterwards!
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