I had two busy days in Cali, which is a big, hot modern city about three hours' drive north of Popayán, and it was a welcome reintroduction to civilisation after the previous few days I spent out in the sticks. I arrived at Pelican Larry Hostel on Sunday night to discover that there were five people staying there that I'd met previously in either Ecuador or Colombia, so I immediately felt at home. That night Gunther, the hostel's owner, hosted a great barbecue that almost all of the guests attended, and I discovered that a fair number of them hadn't been to sleep since the previous day, having been out partying all of Saturday night. For that reason most of them decided to get an early night after the barbecue had finished.
I spent Monday seeing the sights of Cali, including the Cathedral, the Iglesia de San Francisco, and the 16th-century Iglesia de la Merced, which is Cali's oldest church (the last two of these are surrounded by buildings that are more typical of Cali). In the afternoon I went to La Tertulia modern art museum, where I'd heard that the Bodies exhibition was currently showing - that's the one with the dissected and plastinated bodies.
I didn't realise it at the time, but this is actually a rival exhibition to Body Worlds, which is the original and the one that you've probably heard of. Even though it wasn't the original, it was still interesting, and good Spanish practice too, because all of the explanations were in Spanish - I learnt the translations of such useful words as hip, bladder and spinal cord.
The following morning I'd arranged to go on a hike with Boyang, who I first met in Baños in Ecuador, and who's currently living in Cali, where he's studying Spanish for a year as an exchange student from Beijing University. Boyang had only just returned to Cali after being stuck in Ecuador for six weeks as a result of being mugged and having his passport stolen in Quito. I met up with him and three of his Colombian friends in the city centre, and after waiting for an hour for the rain to stop, we set off on the hike up to Cristo Rey, a statue on the top of a nearby hill in a similar style to the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.
After about two hours we arrived at the top of the hill, where we had great views of both the statue above us and of Cali below us. By the time we'd walked back down the hill I was pretty sunburnt, and it was already mid-afternoon, so we decided to go to the house of the uncle of one of Boyang's friends to order a takeaway for lunch. That was an interesting experience in itself, because it gave me the opportunity to see the inside of a middle-class Colombian home. I wouldn't say it was a typical house though, because it was decorated in a pretty extraordinary fashion - almost every available surface in the house (including the dining table and some of the chairs) was filled with garish antiques.
Cali is known as the world capital of salsa dancing, and I'd hoped to be able to go to a salsa night with a live band while I was here. However, I'd arrived at completely the wrong time of the week for that, because Sunday, Monday and Tuesday are the deadest nights of the week for going out in Cali. As a result I left Cali without seeing any live salsa. I still hope to see it before I leave Colombia though, and I think Cartagena is my best remaining chance.
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