Activity Summary
Thursday 17th August - Day 317
Travel to Cali
Chill in the hostel
Friday 18th August - Day 318
Lunch at Japan Ramen
Hostel chill
Cali walking tour
Museo Arqueológico La Merced
Plazoleta de San Francisco - ugly ass place because they kept destroying all the nice buildings and replacing with concrete towers
Sugar cane juice lady
Plaza de Cayzedo
Salsa street
Bulevar del Río
Parque Simón Bolívar
Free hostel salsa lesson
Saturday 19th August - Day 319
Flight to Bogotá
Flight to Guayaquil, Ecuador
Summary
Cali
We had heard terrible things about Cali from people. The people we had known that have been to Colombia either had not gone or spent very little time here but the most damning assessment came from the Comuna 13 tour guide who said it was run down, ridiculously corrupt and that’s why the city just isn’t prospering the way it should.
On that account we shortened our stay here to only two nights and stayed in a hostel on the pretext it would be a safe community space with activities we could join in on. There was a big party vibe here but were predominantly Spanish speakers here for the Petronia festival and there was fuck all attempt by people here to integrate newbies. We are hilariously awkward without an ‘in’ so naturally we kept to ourselves.
The only parts of Cali we actually saw were part of the walking tour. Not much to see in all honesty, the highlight being the Salsa street and the knowledge that everyone in the city loves a salsa party.
It clearly isn’t safe however. Absolutely every business locks their doors; restaurants, laundry, hairdressers etc. which is all so so strange. The tour lady proclaimed that Cali was safe but everything we’d heard and seen didn’t really support this.
It was enjoyable for the 2 nights. Anymore was unnecessary for us non-party peeps.
Transport
Cali
Walk to the bus terminal in Salento
Bus to Almeria - costs P5,900 and takes about an hour
Bus to Cali - Expreso Palmiro minibus, costs P39,000 and takes 3-4 hours
Accommodation
Cali - Viajero Hostel Cali & Salsa School
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £16
Positives:
Good vibe
Safe
Pool and bar were good fun
Hostel events all day
Free breakfast because the hostel staff were useless
Bunk beds were well kitted out with light, curtains and sockets
Actually quiet by 10pm as all the party people went out out
Negatives:
Rooms didn’t lock but all our bags were padlocked under the beds
8 bed dorm room
Rooms were warm with only fans to cool down
Only 3 toilets per sex for the whole hostel
Recommend?
Actually yes - enjoyed the light hearted vibe of the place, fun activities and a decent place to chill to avoid the shit of Cali
Diary
Thursday 17th August - Day 317
To travel to Cali we would need to get a bus from Salento to Armenia and then one to Cali. The journey would take about 5 hours so we weren’t in any rush to leave Salento and time our 3pm check in at our next hostel.
We walked to the Salento bus terminal and got there at about 10.45am. We immediately boarded the bus to Armenia which was completely full by 11am so we were pretty happy with our timing. The driver was a bit of an angry nob, didn’t speak coherent Spanish and was raging about how everyone stacked their bags in the seats. He clearly didn’t enjoy the heat.
What should have been an hour journey ended up taking quite a bit longer as we were stationary on the road for nearly 30 minutes for a reason completely unknown to anyone on board. For once no one was aggressively beeping their horns.
In Armenia we had a quick shuffle to the Palmiro Express booth and purchased a 12.30 ticket at 12.28. The ticket lady was pretty chill about it and the bus didn’t take off till 12.45pm anyway but it did give Nicola a bit of a rush to get a urination in before departing.
The only seats available were 2 of the 4 on the back of the bus. Never comfortable but we were prepared to suck this up for the 4 hours to Cali. Fortunately for us it started off fine as no one else clearly wanted the pain of the shittest seats in the house but just as Nicola was getting comfortable lying across 3 of the 4 of them, two people got in and ruined her vibe.
It was pretty hot and sweaty from that point with some respite at a halfway stop for the bano, pollo papas fried goodness and refreshingly cold Cuatro. Nicola was able to shuffle forward after a short while into the second leg which made us a lot more comfortable.
At the Cali bus terminal we used Cabify to get to the hostel, a little more complicated as a result of the maze of yellow cabs queuing in the terminal down narrow one way streets so we had to walk along the main road to find our guy. Bus terminals in Colombia don’t seem to make it easy for rideshare apps.
We checked into the hostel and were introduced to the dreamy 8 bed shared dorm we would call home for the first time in our part 2 travels. The rooms were kitted out well enough and the lockers to store all our bags was interesting, if not a bit of a pain in the ass given there were no locks to the room. But we chose the hostel as Cali was deemed unsafe and the hostel was very much the opposite, with plenty of places to chill in comfort with a party vibe.
We were pretty tired from travelling and didn’t really see an in to the various groups of people drinking and chilling at the bar / pool. So we did what we do best and sat around the pool with a couple of drinks and were at home being awkward beans. The hostel did run decent activities but seemingly lacked a method of integrating people that weren’t alphas or those that had been drinking continuously all day. A bit of a shame.
Rather than go out for food we had a Rappi takeaway rice box and sorted out various onward travel forms plus began planning the convoluted route between Argentina / Chile, of more importance working out when we were gonna be broke AF and come crawling back home.
Friday 18th August - Day 318
First night of a shared dorm and straight into sleeping like shit.
The room was hot as hell. The fans did very little and despite Cali being quite cool in the afternoon and at night this didn’t transfer into the rooms at all. It got a lot worse as the rest of the room began returning from their various escapades.
But the highlight was two Spanish speaking girls won the dick of the hostel award and basically broke the first rule of sharing a dorm room. At 3am they decided to have a full blown conversation with each other while everyone was trying to sleep. Nicola was the one to tell them to shut their gobby mouths but ended up doing this in such a polite way that was impressive at such an early time and it probably contributed greatly to it working. Luke conversely was 10 seconds away from telling them to shut the fuck up or get out in a similar fashion he had done to previous unruly dorm guests.
We didn’t hear a peep from them the next night so it clearly worked. Got to love paying more for the privilege of not sleeping.
Despite the unsuccessful sleep we were up early, ate some cheap breakfast and went about doing some chores in the morning. We dropped off laundry and Nicola eventually found an open hairdresser nearby. Her first attempt at communicating in Spanish for a chop to her split ends went well and to top it off came away with a jazzy Latin wave for a hair parting.
We chilled at the hostel for the rest of the morning before getting some lunch at Japan Ramen. It wasn’t great but it was cheap enough.
The early afternoon was spent in and around the pool which absolutely knackered Luke out. It was pretty funny to see the same groups of people drinking beers and spirits from the early morning through to the evening party and still be standing.
To see Cali we opted for the safety of another walking tour by Beyond Colombia. It was an absolutely massive group of people so naturally it became a really difficult job for the one person to navigate everyone around town and it was slow going. Isabel wasn’t an overly engaging tour leader and to be honest, we switched off for most of the things she was saying.
Museo Arqueológico La Merced
Plazoleta de San Francisco - ugly ass place because they kept destroying all the nice buildings and replacing with concrete towers
Sugar cane juice lady - the machine and method used to produce the sugar cane lemon juice was pretty cool and tasty.
Plaza de Cayzedo - a much nicer square that had erected the same ‘riff-raff’ excluding barriers. The buildings were much nicer and the Cocora trees in the square were a nice touch.
Salsa street - there were a ton of locals drinking and waiting for a party to kick off. The tour guide organised some older gentlemen to give us a bit of a show which was good fun, if not absolutely chaotic with the street speakers and huge numbers of gringos.
Bulevar del Río - a pedestrianised street that had a ton of people sitting and drinking post work
Parque Simón Bolívar - probably the nicest part we saw of Cali, with the river and church in the park.
The last commentary we had was about the Cali cartels and impact on the people. According to her, the cartels had done a lot to prop up the economy of the city including funding universities and when the kingpins were eradicated, the hole left led to violence and the city becoming much poorer. The regions south of Cali grow a lot of the cocaine and Cali is a through route to production and distribution. Drug dealers are now a lot less vocal but she didn’t actively say they were a stain on the city at all.
It was an interesting take on Cali but she really didn’t scratch any form of surface in explaining why Cali was the way it was, what problems there were and what was being done to fix them. Overall a very bland tour.
We (happily) ran away at 5.30 to get our laundry and managed to catch the last 10 minutes of a live band at the hostel. The place was kicking off and would have been so much more fun than the walking tour…
What we were most interested in was the free hostel salsa lesson. This was great fun, learning 6 or so basic steps with a beer in hand. Nicola laid claim that another dude was easier to dance with because Luke was too rigid. Luke partnered with the dance instructor and kept his sassy critical comments to himself.
Again we found ourselves being awkward little beans post the lesson. Luke had a few beers but aside from walking up to a group, working out whether they actually spoke English (not many did) and randomly joining in their conversation we didn’t really see an easy route to speaking to others. All too English in our socialising.
So we chilled by ourselves around the pool, had some disappointing hostel food and opted against the ‘party bus’ leaving for some salsa clubs.
Saturday 19th August - Day 319
We slept a whole lot better strangely. The room didn’t seem quite as warm and the nobheads from the night before clearly got the message.
We ended up with a free hostel breakfast because the system they had in place sucked so we just didn’t pay. It was pretty hearty as well.
The hostel had a taxi guy that ran us to the airport that was considerably cheaper (P60k) than a cab which also again ended up being nearly free. This time Luke fessed up as the guy was about to turn and drive off. He had just travelled a good 40 minutes outside of Cali and this time we felt bad.
We were waiting around pre-security for a few hours as this was where the only food places were, rather than go through to the gates. That said it was a choice between Dunkin Donuts and subway so it can’t be said there were great options. Dunkin’ won out because it was cheap and the hope of a dirty Mcds in Bogotá.
The flight to Bogotá had some cracking views over the Los Nevados national park, and in particular Tolimo.
All our bags were run through by Latam on connection so we had little worry about once in Bogotá airport. The change from the domestic flight to international took us out of security which meant we could chow down on that desperately needed mcds. We did look like fat fats carrying the 6 bag of Dunkin’ to the table with our maccers. Hilariously though we saw someone else actually chow down on both - at least we had a time lapse excuse.
Once through security we went about trying to spend the last of our small change, trying to preserve the last CLP100k note so we could change up in Ecuador. Luke then went full pleb when deciding to buy an extortionate bottle of (needed) lense solution only to realise it was over 120ml and he may have a problem with that on the Galapagos flight. Turns out they don’t do refunds and we ended up with 3 bars of soap to cover the difference of a smaller bottle of lense solution.
Luke then ended up leaving the Dunkin donuts in another shop we bought some stuff with before having to run back. He was having an absolute melt down by this point and was categorically done with his day.
That being said, there was a young Scottish couple who seemed to have it worse. They were waiting for their international flight to Guayaquil in the domestic terminal and on realising at the same time that the flight was technically boarding, had absolutely legged it to the gate. Made it with plenty of time but they were pretty stressed.
Goodbye Colombia. Not our favourite country at all and we apparently are very much in the minority in this opinion.
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