Next day, we decided to go to Montserrat. It is one of the look out spots of the city for the tourists. However for the locals, this place is of religious importance right from the good old days. There is a nearby hill, which is called Guadalupe. However, out of the two Montserrat is famous due to its accessibility as you can reach there by hike, cable car and funicular whereas Guadalupe can be accessed only by driving.

After having our homemade oatmeal breakfast, we started to walk towards the foot hill a.k.a funicular station. And on the way, I saw a snack stall and we stopped to eat a wafer called “Oblea” , a local snack.

After a small pitstop, we reached the station. I could see a big line and I was told, only the funicular is functioning and not the cable car. I was fine with any of it so it did not make a difference. With a cable car, it can go a little higher. We got the tickets for a round trip of 29,500 COP per person. On weekends, it will cost a little less (17500 COP) because of the locals visiting for religious reasons.

After buying the tickets, we were supposed to wait in a long queue to get to the funicular as there were many people waiting. However, with the typical tourist's face, I asked the lady who worked there where to stand in line to get to the funicular line with my broken Spanish. She suddenly opened the fast track counter and asked us to bypass the queue and get to the front. Lucky me.

After 5 minutes of waiting for the funicular to arrive, and then another 5 minutes for the passengers to deboard who came from the top, we started our ride. It was very steep, and moved fast. We could feel the pressure on our ears but it was a short one ride of 3-5 minutes. Once we got down, we saw a kiosk there, and we wanted to have a coffee and a local snack “Arepa”. We munched and then took another 5 minute uphill walk to the cathedral. Remember there are two ways, one is the normal way and the other is the “Way of Cross”. This path will have 12 sculptures along the way depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Arepa

Cathedral

We tried taking some pictures and stayed inside the cathedral for a bit. After that we took the path adjacent to the cathedral and we saw a small souvenir and food alley decorated. We walked till the end, with the lights, I could guess this place would get lively in the evening, especially during the sunset time. After spending some time and munching our snack “Natu Chips” and we made our way back to the station

Souvenir and Food Alley

Nattu Chips

The Way of Cross

Our next plan for the day was a local market. We decided to go to the Paloquemao fruit market. It is ideal to go early, however our plan was to have lunch but it got delayed in Montserrat and we reached around 3pm. By this time, the food stalls were closed, and we did a quick tour of the market.

All the veggies and fruits were double the size of what gets consumed in India.

By the time we completed a round in the market, we were very hungry. We saw a mall next to the market, so we went to that. On the way, we also saw the flower market from outside and there were also many street vendors selling flowers.

Inside the mall, we went to a Mexican place and had a vegetarian meal. It looked something like a pizza with nachos on the side. After a decent meal, we strolled around the mall, went to IKEA, and saw the Bata store (an Indian footwear :D). Not just Bata, we also saw a large number of Bajaj Pulsars on the roads. We ended the day with a dessert inside the “Exito” supermarket and booked our cabs back to the hotel to wrap our day.

The Way of Cross