Southwest Colombia: Las Lajas

  This past week, Elizabeth and I toured around Southwest Colombia.  I absolutely loved it and cannot wait to visit the interior of Colombia again.  Not only was everything at least half the price as Cartagena, but I was able to practice, and understand, more Spanish in this past week than my four months in Cartagena.  The next few posts will be about some of the highlights of my trip.

  Our first stop was Las Lajas, an extremely small town just a few miles from the Ecuadorian border.  We stayed in Casa Pastoral, a large, communal "hotel" that is run by nuns and looks like an old convent.  It costs us just six bucks apiece for a night of sleeping on mattresses that were probably used by nuns five hundred years ago.  Since the elevation was quite high, it was chilly at night, and the icy shower really helped to rejuvenate the body.
  Seeing as the town closed down by eight at night, we had a hard time even finding something to eat.  Luckily, we were able to grab some hot soup and bandeja paisa (rice, meat, plantain, small salad) before watching the Saturday entertainment of kids' soccer games.

  The main draw of Las Lajas is the Santuario, a neo-Gothic church that was built in the 1900s to commemorate the Virgin Mary appearing here.  Each weekend, there are hundreds of pilgrims coming to pay their respects, hear mass and go to confession.  

  The scenery surrounding this church is absolutely stunning.  There is a bridge spanning between two mountainsides with a river flowing at the bottom and greenery everywhere.  Below the church is a chapel where priests are constantly hearing confessions, and under that is a museum that shows old church relics and how the indigenous people used to live.