Things became suddenly very Colombian as soon as I crossed the border. One thing which struck me was the explosion of beauty products, all the stylish sexy clothes, and the metamorphosis of the proportions of female mannequins.
The night before heading to Cali I kept tossing and turning, dreaming that I was having small annoyances with my transportation to Cali. Well, it wasn´t as in my dream, but the supposed 10 hour bus ride turned into 12.5. Again, I was getting spoiled in small Ecuador with shorter distances. Here there also seem to be less larger buses, and more taxi-vans in their place. They´re not necessarily more comfortable, though they seat less people. The bus is always stopping to pick up and drop off passengers along the way, too.
My hostel is in the fancier Granada area with lots of restaurants and shops. It reminds me of Polanco and Miraflores with people looking healthy jogging in stylish workout wear, in a neighbourhood with expensive shopping malls and gated homes... a world away from other parts of the country.
The Centro Historico across the river was mostly quiet this Sunday, apart from the sections of bustling streets full of vendors selling cheap clothes, toys, gadgets, and street food.
Refreshing lulo juice tastes even better on this warm day.
mango verde con sal y limón
Passengers awaiting a trip of rapid transportation.
There was an abundance of this happening:
Other things I did in Cali were go salsa dancing, take a salsa lesson, and get completely soaked in stormy rain.
The salsa dancing almost didn´t happen, and it´s a long story, but luckily two women came and saved me, and a long, expensive taxi ride later and we´d made it. You can´t come to Cali and not do something salsa as the city lives and breathes salsa. I wanted to visit Cali after hearing a friend describe the dancers here as having no money, probably no or few lessons and not many fancy stylized tricks, but more passion than hundreds of lessons and fancy choreography could concoct. I was only able to dip into the salsa nightlife here, but I never got the feeling that any of the dancers here were trying to show off their moves and tricks which is something I can´t say about the salsa places in Vancouver I´ve been to.
It was also a slightly confusing experience for me since I don´t know much about dancing salsa in the first place, and second, the style I know about is LA style which is common in Vancouver, but here everyone dances Cali style and, unfortunately I wasn´t able to book a lesson until after going out.
I had a private hour lesson to learn a few Cali basics and it was tons of fun. Lots of turns, dips, and my instructor even surprised me and flipped me 360 degrees at one point. Having a good lead can make it almost seem like you know what you´re doing!
Fruit chunks & juice is so simple, yet so good.
This is a drink made with shaved ice (hi Taiwan), an assortment of fruit, syrups, condensed milk, and what seemed like a million other ingredients.
barrio San Antonio
I found some of the empty streets here a bit creepy, but there were police everywhere.
And this is what I spent about 3 seconds in before getting completely drenched, then catching a cab about 6 blocks back to my hostel.
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