Cultural Landscape of Salt Towns

In preparation of my Colombia trip I thought I had stumbled upon an interesting TWHS location to write about. Of the 3 Salt Towns that form a combined entry on the Tentative List, Zipaquirá is by far the most touristy one. Nemocón however is a bit more off-the-beaten track and has more authentic salt history on show. I knew from his itinerary that Solivagant aimed for Zipaquirá, so I thought I had found a different (and maybe better!) angle. Upon his return though we exchanged e-mails and it became clear that he had gone to Nemocón as well instead of Zipaquirá. To make things worse, he even wrote the kind of review which makes you wonder whether you’d want to go there at all.

I contemplated for a moment to aim for Tausa, the third town that is part of this Cultural Landscape of Salt Towns TWHS. But that would require an even longer trip by public bus from Bogota. So on an early Sunday morning I was off to Nemocón as well. There are hourly buses by the Transalianza company that will take you there from Bogota’s main bus station (Terminal Salitre, Modulo Rojo). Door-to-door it took me 3 hours each way.

Nemocón turned out to be a cozy place, geared to tourism on a modest scale. You can also get there by tourist train from Bogotá. Salt was extracted in this region already before the arrival of the Spaniards. It was done by boiling brackish groundwater …

Imprisoned in a Salt mine!! We only had 2 experiences in Colombia where we had to join a group tour – visits to Guatavita Lake and to Nemocon mine. BOTH suffered from an incredibly long-winded tour experience. This was not due to our problems with Spanish – the Nemocon tour was in (semi) English and the Guatavita tour Spanish was adequately understood by us. No, it appears that Colombians expect a good long outing when they pay for a guided tour! Our Nemocon tour lasted almost 2 hours and could have been perfectly well covered in 1!!

Out of the 3 Salt Towns included in this T List site we had originally intended visiting that at Zipaquirá for no better reason than it was on our direct route back to Bogota. It is also by far the most frequently visited, being an easy day (or even afternoon, if you have your own transport) return journey from Bogota. It is particularly famous for its underground “Salt Cathedral”. For some unknown reason however the mine decided to close on the day we were due to visit and, rather than swap dates, we opted to visit the mine at Nemocón instead.

It is noteworthy that the site is listed as the “Cultural Landscape of Salt Towns” which implies that it is intended to cover rather more than a mine in each town. There are indeed a few elements mentioned in addition to the mines themselves – at Nemocon, excavations have uncovered …