My Final Destination in Colombia - Salsa Capital: Cali

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Salsa Capital: Cali (02/05/2018-05/05/2018)

If you don't like salsa, then don't come to Cali. It is everywhere! The people of Cali eat, breath, and sleep salsa. It is more than just a dance, it is a religion. The World Salsa Festival is even held here. We had a long bus ride from Salento to Cali and then Sal and I said our goodbyes. Immediately, this felt like the sketchiest place yet... and the horror stories began flowing. Every shop and restaurant had a locked door (see Exhibit A). So if you are wondering why there are very few photos from Cali, it is because my camera stayed in a locked safe in the hostel the majority of the time... that, and, I think the last computer I used deleted my Cali snaps.. oops!

Private Salsa Lesson

There are hundreds of Salsa schools in Cali, so I picked a good, local one and treated myself to a one hour long private 1:1 lesson. Camilo, my friendly Colombian Salsa instructor was fun and energetic, and of course he didn't really speak any English. So, the lesson was in Spanglish, which only made things more interesting! Surrounded by fans and mirrors, he taught me some steps and we had a great time dancing together.

Food Tour

Here, I did another food tour (I love my food tours), where we sampled all sorts of crazy looking fruits: pitahaya, chontaduro, uchuva, tomate de arbol, guava, lulo, guanabana. But by far, the weirdest fruit was the guama. The crazy green guama pod is as long as your forearm! Once you pop the pod open, you can see the fruit, which look like a row of grey cotton balls wrapped around a large dark seed. You pop one "cotton ball" in your mouth at a time, and suck and nibble off the sweet, soft furr, then spit out the smooth seed. It is very, very bizarre!

...And The Rest

My evenings in Cali were spent, you guessed it... dancing at local salsa bars. There was nothing quite like sitting on the edge of a dance floor in a busy club and having a lovely Colombian man giving you his hand for a dance.

For my final night in Cali, I was a good girl and decided it was best to stay in because I had my early, "panic bought flight" to Ecuador's capital, Quito. I was really grateful of this flight (well done, past Amy) as it meant skipping a potentially dodgy border crossing (full of Venezuelans trying to get into Ecuador) and a potentially very long wait (some pals had waited up to 12 hours!), I was really sad to leave Colombia, but felt I had achieved a lot in my 1 month here, and had ticked off everything on my list and got a real taste of this beautiful country. Before I left for South America there was a lot of confused faces when I said Colombia was on my list of travel destinations. But I hope that by reading my blog, it has spread the word that Colombia is an incredible travel destination! It has a huge diversity of landscapes (something to do with it's equatorial position); from the soaring Andean mountains, stunning Caribbean coastline, thick, lush rainforest, archaeological ruins, and beautiful cobbled colonial towns. Lonely Planet describes Colombia as South America with a shot of Carribean thrown in. And I absolutely loved every minute of this tropical, energetic, and diverse country!

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Photos

Me and Camilo
My Salsa Dancing Instructor

Comments

[Chris Arundel]

missing you
I hate reading your blogs - you're having such fun, meeting beautiful people in exotic places packed with adventure. My adventure to Park barn for the Home 1st workshop just doesn't compare so it's hardly worth a mention. Not been up to much lately my bestie not been well lately so weekends have been spent in suburbia pottering about the garden having out with mates in Guildford and woking. I'm off to the theatre this weekend to see that Queen musical against's a treat for a mates daughters 18th birthday. I want to learn to salsa so you better bring Camilo home with you. If you have a mo listen to her music https://soundcloud.com/thiana-aidoo. That care, enjoy your lovely adventure can't wait to catch up when your back home xxxxx