Day 11 (184 Km)

We went to visit the famous Cathedral of Zipaquira, which was carved out in a still commercial used salt mine. According guide books, it is one of the most visited places of Colombia. Walked from the hotel to the entrance up the hill and arrived there around 9 am, just before they opened up. After paying the $ 10.00 fee a guide took us in the mine, gave us a tour and 2 hours later we left, packed our bags and hit the road towards Medellin. Looking @ a map we decided to go north for a 100 km and then take road 60 west, instead of back tracking to Bogota and then take the auto piste. The first part north was ok a brought us up to 3000 meter on heavily traveled road with lot of slow trucks, Once we made the left turn, it all changed and it begun as a windy narrow paved road with hardly an traffic and didn't know where we would run into.

The scenery was astonishing and soon we were getting higher, but the road started to deteriorate, but that is where our bikes were made for! Had lunch around 2 pm in a valley at only 500 meter altitude, so we dropped about 2500 meter in the last hour and it started to get warm again especially with all the layers of clothes we had on. Just after lunch we continued and encountered a lineup of some vehicles and saw the road was like a mud pool. Asking questions, they said we could not continue till 5 pm, because further down the road they were fixing it. Finally they let us go and when we passed the section, they were fixing, we understand why and had to walk with help from other people to get passed. An hour later, just before dark, we reached a place Otanche, looked for a hotel with safe parking and