Zipaquirá is an attractive town in the Cundinamarca department of Colombia. The Salt Cathedral makes it a popular day trip from Bogotá.
The town of Nemocón is fairly small but beautiful. It’s worth wandering through town and visiting the Nemocón Salt Mine.
Not too far outside of Bogotá is Tequendama Falls (Salto del Tequendama). It’s a popular tourist attraction and an important part of Muisca mythology.
One of the best extreme sports destinations in Colombia is located a short drive north of Bogotá in the small town of Suesca. Although we didn’t visit Suesca specifically for that purpose (it was a great place to break up our drive to Boyacá), we took a couple hours in the morning to check out what outdoor activities are available.
The small town of Guaduas, about two hours from Bogotá, was the birthplace of one of Colombia’s revolutionary heroes, Policarpa Salavarrieta. It’s also one of Colombia’s prestigious Heritage Towns (Pueblos Patrimonio), filled with small colonial buildings.
Just outside of Bogotá in the town of Chía, there’s a great place to go have an enjoyable dinner – the famous Colombian steakhouse Andrés Carne de Res. With odd decorations on every inch of the walls and ceilings, an enthusiastic and fun staff, and loud music and dancing, this place is a spectacle in itself.
For over 2000 years, the native Muisca people performed a ritual in a small circular mountain lake located north of what is now Bogotá. In this ritual, the newly crowned Muisca tribal chief covered himself in gold dust and took a raft to the center of Lake Guatavita (Laguna de Guatavita). He then offered treasures made of gold to the gods by dumping them into the lake.
Guatavita is a small town near Bogotá, Colombia, that was built in the 1960s. It replaced an older town with the same name that was flooded during the construction of a reservoir. The town is the gateway to Lake Guatavita, where the Legend of El Dorado was born.
