The next morning was rough. Didn't get started til after 6:30 and leaving the south of the city traveling north was a nightmare with the traffic. I would say close to trying to do the same through somewhere as large as Chicago during rush hour. The good thing however was that Diego who had helped show me around yesterday thought my bike trip sounded pretty cool so he joined me to ride to Zipaquira. I rough ride with the big city traffic but we stopped for some good local sweet cornbread which had a really long name I forget, and some of here well known ice cream. Diego headed back and I went to he famous 'Catedral de Sal' in Zipaquira which was quite impressive. To give little insight, the salt mines were at one time where Colombia and most of the world acquired it's riches before gold became so valuable, and the mines were really dangerous due to the explosive gases. So the workers Being a devout Catholic country built a chapel underground completely of the rock which was all over 80% salt. On my your Iearned that as proo of how valuable salt used to be, many Latin words related to value were derived from "sol" (salt) such as 'salary' which was bases on the salt commissions people use to be paid with and "sol-dier" which were those noble men who were given salt portions for their service in I believe Rome. They then expanded all of the mine caves into more chapels and the stations of the cross for people to come see. You could touch everything and taste your finger and sure enough it was salt. Also really interesting was that he negative charge from being surrounded by salt drains your cellphone and camera super fast.
After I continued north the ride got really rough going up hill a lot, having what seemed to be every semi truck in all of Colombia heading North and heavy rain. I found myself riding while the night approached, which occurs by 6:00, a situation ironically promised myself to never be in. At one point it was near 6 miles straight up hill in the rain. For those Pittsburghers reading I'm talking steeper than PJ Mcardle for at least 5 miles. When I finally reached Ubate after 48 miles I took the first hotel (and possible the only) and literally crashed on top of the bed til about 9 pm. It was a pretty crap looking town, but then I found the town square which had a huge cathedral like church which there should be a pic of below, and oddly finding a nice church just makes a town so much more welcoming. I only felt that drained here and there in my life and it reminded me of how I felt after Ethan and I returned from climbing Mt Shasta. I woke up just to go find some grub and force myself to shower before again crashing til 8 the next morning.
