Cali: Salsa capital of the world

---

From Salento, Ryan, Benoit, Amelie, and I took a harrowing 3-hour ride in a minivan down to Cali. I´m not sure what prompted us to take the minivan as opposed to a bus. Perhaps it was that it was leaving right away. Or perhaps it was that it would be an hour less travel time than taking a bus. Or perhaps it was just that we hadn't traveled by minivan yet and we wanted to try it. Either way, it´s shocking we survived the tailgating, speeding, line-crossing, multi-car passing, nauseating trip. Solid yellow and double yellow lines on the streets and highways don't have any significance whatsoever. Just fyi. Our driver would ride someone´s tail by inches, then get over into the other lane to pass (if other cars were coming, it didn't matter at all), speed up quickly, pass, and then have to slam the breaks as he inched up on the next vehicle in our lane. Oh... my.... god. I nearly died of carsickness. Ryan, in the front with the driver, said he felt fine.

We arrived in Cali at night and checked into the only hostel we really knew of, The Pelican. This was a major party hostel. Big dorm rooms and tons of people hanging out in flip-flops, playing cards on the patio. After we got settled, we went for some dinner around the corner. The plan was to check out some local bars and then go out to a salsa club, since Cali is the salsa capital of the world. Well, the drinks at the local bars were running about $10+ each. So, we opted for a bottle of rum, 2 liters of Coke, and we went back the hostel to play cards. Benoit and Amelie taught us the French version of UNO, which is really fun and takes much less time than the American version. We ended up playing UNO til 2:30 a.m. Then we took a cab to the salsa club. The salsa clubs are open til 6 a.m., so we knew we had plenty of time.

The salsa clubs in Cali are for real. The one we were in was gigantic and had stadium seating in big white booths. The locals are very serious about salsa, which makes it fun to watch, but not really an option to participate unless you are as fabulous as they are. Most of the locals filtered out around 4 a.m., so we had a big dance floor and tried to do a little dancing but the DJ only played salsa, merengue, and bachata. Since Ryan doesn't do much latin dancing, we just ended up doing our own thing most of the time. The four of us split another bottle of rum, easily the cheapest way to go at the club, and we left the bar when they kicked us out at 6 a.m. with the remainder of our rum in little plastic to-go cups.

We slept until just before check-out time, got some lunch, and headed to the next town with Benoit and Amelie in tow.

---