Our Lady of Las Lajas

Shrines to Mama Mary are all over the world.

This one at Las Lajas, on the Colombia/Ecuador border, and commemorates a vision to poor Indian woman and her deaf mute child

The story of the cathedral's creation is that in 1754 an Amerindian named Maria Mueces and her deaf-mute daughter Rosa were caught in a very strong storm. They found refuge between the gigantic Lajas, and to Maria Mueces's surprise, Rosa exclaimed "the mestiza is calling me..." and pointed to the lightning-illuminated painting over the laja. The oldest account was recorded in the accounts of Fray Juan de Santa Gertrudis's voyage through the southern region of the New Kingdom of Granada between 1756 and 1762


A longer version of the story can be found HERE.

We visited by taking two buses down the Pan American hiway to Ipialis, then took a smaller bus and then a taxi to about a mile from the shrine, at which point we had to walk across the bridge.


There were many pilgrims there, some from Colombia, as we were, and many from Ecuador.

You could tell those from Ecuador, because usually they wore a poncho and were smaller and more "indigneous" than the metziso Colombianos.

We prayed in the shrine, and went to light a candle in the outside house for candles (a seperate chapel across the bridge. Presumably to keep the fire hazard down).

Then I rested while my sons risked the walk down the cliff to the bottom, where there is a spring in which pilgrims could wash.

I went along the road on the shrine side, which is covered with placques saying thanks to Mama Mary for her healings and answers to prayers.

Then we hiked back over the bridge, and down a dirt road into town (rather than take a taxi since the weather was nice).

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There was one other "shrine" to Our Lady that we saw during our stay.

The Airport was fogged in (you can see how dangerous the airport approach is at you tube HERE)

And while going down the Pan American highway to Cali (which is lower in altitude and less prone to fog) we saw a statue of the virgin on a hillside, surrounded by candles.

Someone had a vision of the Virgin there, and the locals had made a shrine.

We couldn't stop...This was in an isolated area, far from towns and cities, in an area where people were basic farmers or worked for richer farmers. Yet there too Mama Mary had appeared and prayers were being said and answered.