The Hotel Del Salto´s Chilling Story

The Hotel Del Salto, also known as The Tequendama Falls Hotel, is located in Cundinamarca, Colombia, approximately 30 km from Bogotá, in the Soacha department.

Sara Burdick
4 min readSep 27, 2022

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Credit: Arturo Aparicio The Hotel Del Salto

The Hotel Del Salto, also known as The Tequenda ma Falls Hotel, is located in Cundinamarca, Colombia, approximately 30 km from Bogotá, in the Soacha department. The hotel sits directly across from a 180-meter-high natural waterfall, Tequendama Falls.

Hotel Del Salto, when translated to English, means ¨hotel of the leap¨ and can also be translated to ¨hotel of the fall¨. The hotel was originally a residential home to an architect named Carlos Arturo Tapias; it did not become a hotel until 1928. It remained in operation for the next 60 years.

In 1950 they even started constructing an 18-floor hotel; however, the construction never began, and the original hotel became too damaged to operate. Over the years tourism decreased to the hotel, and with the increasing trash, human waste, and industrial pollution in the Bogota river the smell became unbearable. The hotel was closed in 1990.

Tequendama can be translated to ¨he who precipitated downward¨. In the Chibcha language of the Muisca people. The natives to the land before the Spanish invasion, which started in the 1500s.

They are rumors that the indigenous tribespeople jumped into the waterfall during the Spanish Conquest to avoid being killed, believing in becoming eagles and flying away. It is said that the gods would transform them mid-jump, and they would fly away. Another side of the story is that the tribe members would take prisoners and push or make them jump to death.

The Myth is that the Gods Created The Falls.

The Muiscas are indigenous Amerindian people that have inhabited the Cundiboyacense highlands and the south of the department of Santander, in the center of the current Republic of Colombia, since approximately the 6th century BC.

The God of Bochica created the falls to prevent the flooding of the Bogota Savannah. However, Bochica only showed up because it is said that the Muiscas disrespected the gods and offended Chibchacum (the…

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Sara Burdick

I quit the rat race after working as a nurse for 16 years. Travel and Storyteller. I live in Colombia. https://linktr.ee/saraaliceburdick