In the morning we caught a local bus out to Zipaquira, a cute small town claiming to have once been the most important town in Colombia in it's prime mining days. We walked through town and up the hill (a small feat in such high altitude of 2,650m) to the entrance to the salt cathedral. The cathedral was originally a salt mine dug straight into the mountain at the outskirts of town, in which the magnificent church has now been created. The cathedral was opened to the public from 1995. We walked through a long tunnel into the mountain which was colourfully lit up (one of the more touristy places we've been). This was followed by a passageway of carefully lit up crosses in large alcoves, each symbolising Christ's last days. The main part of the church was ginormous and very beautiful - again pictures don't do it justice. We had a combined ticket to also do the 'miners route' - this required the lovely yellow hard hats. The first part of the tour involved walking up to roof level of the church, the tour guide then asked us to turn off the head lights and we had to inch through a tight pitch-black hallway (didn't realise we were signing up for this!). Although the tour was all in Spanish, we got up close with the miners tools and got to explore the passageways for half an hour with a view over the main church. There were a couple of other touristy activities down in the mine including a random light and sound show (not sure how this related) and a 3D movie about the history of the mine. The salt is still mined today but they drill into the ground and extract the salt using water-based methods and large machinery.