Cali

Our mahoosive bus journey bought us to Cali, a place we were led to believe would be thoroughly boiling compared to chilly Bogota due to its much lower elevation. Temperatures at this time of year are usually around the 30-32C mark. When we arrived however, it was pissing it down, and this was a theme that continued pretty much throughout our lovely 5 days here. As I mentioned in the previous post Cali is known for its spectacular Salsatechs (salsa dancy clubs), and we were keen to check them out as we had loved our Nicaraguan experience even if we were rubbish at it.

Originally we had planned to stay at the pretty standard backpacker type place known as the Guesthouse Iguana. Unfortunately our taxi driver had never heard of it, and it was tucked down a tiny street, so he drove us around for a good half an hour before asking a very young looking lady of questionable virtue where it might be. Fortunately she did know and he got us there sharpish. The Guesthouse Iguana proved to be totally full, though, but the helpful chap working there remembered a new place that had just opened not 2 weeks beforehand called the Cafe Tostaky, and gave them a call and secured us a room.

This place was a lot easier to find, being located in the lovely old bit of Cali known as San Antonio, and we were glad the taxi driver could find his way there as it had gone 11...way past our bedtime these days. We were greeted by Vinz, one half of the young and supremely enthusiastic French-Columbian couple who had just finished getting the hostel part of their new enterprise together and had very nearly finished setting up the cafe. Vinz and Claudia proved to be the most gracious and generous hosts we have yet encountered and really made our stay in Cali something special.

Here's a picture of Vinz by the front entrance.


It was a lovely building that they'd chosen to do up, and it was pleasure to stay there. Not just because of the beautiful breakfasts they made us everyday. Vinz's English was fortunately pretty darn good, and it was a very chilled cheerful communal atmosphere that they were keen for us to take part in. Claudia offered to give us some Salsa lessons, but living up to our national stereotype we were much too chicken for this without copious amounts of alcohol.

On our first day of exploring we wandered around the various very different parts of Cali. The city centre is split in two by the raging Rio Cali. On the west side is the old city centre and the historic part of San Antonio where we stayed, and on the east is the new city centre. This is the view of the busy road next to the river crossing from the old to the new. The church on the distance was beautiful if a bit worse for wear. The traffic was suitably manic.


After getting caught in the most almighty downpour, we made our way over to the new part where Clairy spotted this excellent bit of heartfelt grafitti.


We also noticed this tree who's intense hot pink blossoms were completely hidden inside its dense foliage.


They looked almost unreal on the floor.


We looked round the beautifully restored Museo Arqueologico La Merced, and there was some fine pre-Columbian pottery. Clairy got a few pictures in before a gumpy security lady told her that it wasn't allowed.






Outside in the lush garden were these utterly insane giant green fruits growing directly out the trunk of this tree.


Lots of suitably dirty buses belching black smoke about.


Directly behind the town green hills rose up.


This immaculately painted truck was being loaded with bricks just round the corner from us. You can see the buildings are more colonial in style.


The Plaza de Caycedo (main plaza) in the old centre. It had vast palm trees shooting up from it.


The Catedral San Pedro of the main square.


We had planned to go out to a Salsatech after our fantastic day on the crazy moped trains, and had fortunately met a nice columbian couple who advised us to try Tintindeo, a place known for its friendly chilled out atmposhere and top Salsaing clientelle. It turned out to be a very long day but we were both eager, so necked a couple of beers, spruced oursleves up as best we could with our limited wardrobes and headed off out.

'Yer, scrubs up pretty nice I reckon!'


The club was great. We were shown to a table with a great view of the dancefloor, and cheerfully attended by super efficient waiters all night. After a couple of beers we felt we should really do as the locals were and got ourselves a half bottle of Ron (Rum to those of you non-fluent in Spanish) . This really did the trick and soon enough even though we had no idea what we were doing we got up and had a dance. It was however much more fun to listen to the stunning music and watch the professionals. They made it look so damn easy, but it really isn't!

Eventually we headed home to find a salsa party going on in Vinz and Clau's prospective Cafe. Here we met Laura and Fabian, a super friendly French couple who were near the end of their big travels. Claudia was showing them some salsa moves in preparation for the following night when they were going back to Tintindeo to strut there funky stuff! Obviously being pissed as farts we agreed to postpone heading on by one day and go back with them. Clair then got stuck into the salsa lesson with some handy translation from Laura. I chatted to Fabian and Vinz until he pointed out it was nearly 3 O clock and we should all have been in bed.

Needless to say we felt absolutely rough as old dogs the next morning, and achieved almost nothing throughout our entire last day in Cali. We did go back to Tintindeo with Fabian and Laura later though, and drunk through the pain to have another excellent night. The highlight of this for me was when the floor was cleared and a very young couple proceeded to show everyone what a proper Argentinian tango looked like. It was utterly stunning. We look forward to getting some proper salsa lessons in when we can, as it really just looks like so much fun when done well.

The next day I raided Vinz's vast music collection and he selected some fab salsa music to take with us on our mp3 players. A massive added bonus. Thanks guys for such a fabulous time!