the plane arrived on a flight from medellin during the afternoon.
on landing the air hostes announced "bienvenidos a cali, la capital the la salsa"
welcome to cali, the capital of salsa
my taxi driver was an old guy maybe in his 70s. i hopped into the passanger seat and told him i would tell him the address of the hostel in a moment. as we were driving i realised the hostel i had booked on the net was not actually in my guidebook and he didnt know where it was either so to keep things simple i asked him to take me to one of the others . he knew hostel iguana!
as we passed through the neighbourhood of the hostel, i asked him if this place was dangerous, to which he replied.. "no no, es muy vigilado" (no no its very heavily policed)
the lady in hostel iguana was a truely lovely person. and spoke to me in length about everything i wanted to know.
she showed me a map of cali and explained where all of the different things that may interest me are located. on top of that i asked her which areas i should avoid.
she put her hand to her mouth for a moment. then swept her hand across half the city .
ooh!..... de aqui .....hasta alla! (ohhh!! from here .....to there)
a lot of people back home had asked me if colombia was dangerous and of course it is, the colombians have confirmed that to me, but getting to colombia you realise that its better to say "PARTS OF colombia are dangerous"
similarly when colombians tell you "cali is dangerous" you then realise on getting there that its in fact "parts of cali ". admittadly it is a rather large part. it appears as though the city is divided in two. the safe part and the dangerous one.
i am eager to learn salsa, cali style after my experience in bogota.
@@@ knows a polish friend who organises classes, he said he can have a guy come over to the hostel . this teacher is apparently mixing cuban/LA and cali which im not really holding high hopes for but what the hell, lets give it a try.
i also asked felipe if there was anything to do on a monday night, he told me of a salsa place called "la brisa" a good 30 minute drive from the centre. i needed to find someone to come with me and their was a young australian guy of vietnamese descent in the hostel watching tv. you'l do! lets go.
we stopped in a incredible argentinian restaurant before heading out.. very nice!! then headed in a taxi to "ls brisas".
the taxi driver was an overwieght kind of guy with a grin and sly look in his eyes. he drove so dangerously on the way. which im getting used to. they try everything from overtaking between cars and motorbikes, to talegating ..you name it. you just have to hold onto your seat and reassure yourself thay these guys know what they are doing, we did come across motorbike accident on the way out there which doenst help.
we entered the nightclub and took a seat and watched the calenos dancing. the music was excellent and the amount of beautiful women was jaw dropping... now i know that all these salsa songs about cali are true.
i was a bit nervous about stepping on any cultural toes by asking any girls to dance if they happened to be sitting with a few guys, however i did find a table or two where there were too many girls and got a few of them out on the floor for a boogie.
later on the way back, our next equally sly eyed taxi driver was quoting us 30 thousand instead ot the 25 thousand we were charged to get here, we had been told it was going to be more to come back to town so we agreed.
this guy drove faster again. he ran every single red light.. i asked him if this was ok , he smiled and shrugged. my vietnamese friend mentioned "i guess thats why we pay him 30 thousand and not 25" he understood that and laughed.
we saw another motorbike accident on the way. and also our driver slowed down as we encountered some commotion on a street with police around as some guy threatened to jump off the roof of a building... im not kidding!
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