From Cartagena to Cali - Salsa Capital of South America!

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Hola, Amigos!
Our trip in Cartagena continued with school and sight seeing. I learn more about Tony each day. He finally got grumpy one day after class when his teacher started going over irregular verb conjugations in the present tense. He wanted the rule for irregular verb conjugations. I tried to explain there was no rules, you just have to memorize which ones they are, that is why they are called irregular. He grumbled for a while but quickly got over it when we toured the Palace of the Inquisition where Roman Catholic tribunals executed witches and heretics and realized that some people have really bad days. At the Palace, we splurged for a guide who spoke English. Along with some gruesome displays of how ghastly one man can torture and kill another man the palace also displayed artifacts and paintings that discussed the history of Cartagena. We also toured the free gold museum that specialized in Sinu pre-Columbian culture. On our last night (Thursday), we went on a crazy Chiva bus tour of Cartagena with some students from the school. The bus contains an open bar, non-stop ´Papayera´ live music and a ´director´ that tells jokes and coordinates the dance contest between mujeres y hombres! We didn´t understand much of what was going on, but, we had a good time anyway. The bus dropped us off at 11pm at La Candela, a disco, where we salsa danced with some of the students and a Venezuelan couple we met on the bus. Next to Tony and I, they were probably the best dancers in Cartagena that night! Even so, they had Tony teach him some of his fancy moves. On our walk back to our hotel in the wee hours of the night, we had our first close encounter with the local elements. We had a slight altercation with a mutant cockroach that tried to hold us up. But, my hero, Tony deftly managed the situation!
On Friday, after class, we left for Cali, the self proclaimed Salsa Capital of South America. Due to a lack of attention to detail on my part, we ended up in the wrong hotel - the Cali Plaza instead of the Plaza Cali. However, the universe was taking care of us as the hotel was perfectly situated in the heart of the salsa discotheques! There were, I am not kidding, about 50 discos within four blocks. The cacophony of the salsa music coming from the discos was overwhelming! The first one we went to was for the children. Everyone was under 12, I think. Mostly freak dancing. ´Where are the salsa dancers? ´ we wondered. We wandered to another disco and were seated at a table. After much discussion, I finally figured out you must buy alcohol by the bottle with your choice of mixers (single drinks are way expensive). So, this is how they get you to stay awhile .....
We ordered a bottle of rum and some coke to go with it. Then, we watched the dancers. It is true, this really is the salsa capital of south america. Of all the central and south american countries I have visitied, these people love their salsa the most. Everyone dances with ritmo. Their style was similar to what we saw in Cartagena. And we saw no one dancing our style, which is somewhat flashy in comparison. We finally started to dance and when we sat down to rest, one girl came over and to talk to us and compliment us on our dancing. My spanish translation of what she said is, I am pretty sure, very accurate. It went something like -- ´Oh, my god, you are such fabulous dancers! I have never seen such dancing! It was amazing! And you chica, you were totally stunning out there on the dance floor! Can you teach me to move like that?´
The next day, we took a walking tour of the city ending up at Iglesia de San Antonio, a church on a hill that overlooks Cali. On our walk back, we discovered Iglesia La Merced, an very old church that now houses an archeological museum, one of the best museums we have seen yet.
That night, we found we were also in the trendy part of town. Several blocks in the opposite direction of the discos were the expensive restaurants and botique stores. We ate at one recommended by Angel, a really nice guy we met on the plane. It was our best meal yet! Expensive, but, excellent! We strolled around for awhile and then went to a salsa club recommended by the guide book called Zaperoco that was a few blocks off the disco strip. We hit the jackpot with this place. While the clubs we went to the night before played a mix of salsa, cumbia, merengue and reggaeton. Zaperoco played only salsa. People came with instruments to keep the clave rythm and the place was packed with salseros! This was our favorite place and we highly recommend it to anyone looking for a place to salsa dance in Cali.
Overall, we were please with Cali. Of all the places on the itinerary, this was the one I worried about the most for safety. But, we were fine and had no problems at all.
The next day (Sunday), we left Cali for Popayan. The journey was one filled with lawyers, guns, money and bribes. OK, just bribes. Stay tuned ....

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Photos

Palace of the Inquisition
Tony demonstrating The Rack

Zaperoco
Our favorite Cali salsa club