It’s a more subdued Salento that we wander around this morning, the revellers and noise of last night replaced by a hint of the calm that would usually be found in the town. So as a result, we enjoy a bit of souvenir shopping and a relaxed coffee in the main square before our friendly driver Andres picks us up once more and we continue our journey south, passing through the small city of Armenia, which is the capital of the department of Quindío, heading for Colombia’s third biggest city, Cali.
It gets much hotter as we descend back down towards the Rio Cauca and drive along the highway through the huge valley. The landscape changes with the temperature and instead of coffee which needs a slightly cooler, higher altitude we start seeing sugar cane plantations beside the road. With Andres preferring open windows to air conditioning we need to stop at a service station for ice creams to cool down, eventually arriving in Cali at just gone 4pm.
Like most tourists we’re staying in the historic San Antonio district, and check into our room at the Casa Nispera hotel before we go out to explore. Having read a few cautionary tales about Cali’s dodgy reputation we check with the front desk about where is safe to walk to and the receptionist tells us that the the three or four blocks around the hotel “should” be fine. However she also advises us to take good care of our valuables and be aware of our surroundings. Sadly Cali has replaced Medellin as the most dangerous city in Colombia and is rife with street crime, especially after dark.
We walk a couple of blocks up the hill to Parque San Antonio, where families gather for great views over the city, and check out its church dating back to 1748, which still has a convent of nuns attached to it. It also has an intriguing sculpture of birds and toy windmills called Maceta, which we learn the following day is in honour of Godparents’ Day, which is a major celebration in Colombia and is when godchildren are given a smaller version of the maceta as a present.
There’s street vendors and restaurants around along with little souvenir shops and we watch an open air dance class of Caleños dancing in a circle to an indigenous routine. It all feels pretty safe and secure, however we’ve been warned a number of times never to get complacent in Cali so keep our wits about us as we walk to Alma, a vegan cafe back down the hill, where the very cheery lady feeds us empanadas and plant-based lasagna along with fresh passion fruit and mango juices. We leave as dusk is falling and then spend the evening having a couple of drinks safely in the hotel’s interior courtyard, full of palm trees and a pool.
Next morning, our new guide Catalina is waiting for us with a very taciturn driver called Lupolo in a people carrier outside. Before we set off to explore further, she walks us back to Parque San Antonio and gives us a little history of the city. Cali, or Santiago de Cali to give it its full name, was founded here in San Antonio on July 25th 1536 by Sebastian de Belalcázar, but there had been a settlement of the indigenous Misak tribe here for over 3500 years beforehand. The city, whose moniker comes from the Calimas tribe who were dominant in the area when the Spanish arrived, now has 2.6 million inhabitants and was the first Colombian city to declare independence from Spain, in February 1810.
Catalina tells us that Cali has always been a revolutionary place, and its citizens pride themselves on being at the vanguard of protest and social change. National strikes almost always start in Cali and in the 60’s and 70’s the student movement here led nationwide protests, and paid a heavy price with police crackdowns where many students were killed. The police are still feared and disliked here as they continue to use violence and are riddled with corruption, with a big mural honouring the students who they have killed in the past twenty years alone.
We drive through the well-to-do neighbourhood of El Peñol to reach one of Cali’s few genuine tourist attractions, El Gato Del Río. It’s a big bronze sculpture of a cat by acclaimed local artist Hernando Tejeda, which was commissioned by the city authorities as a symbol for the city and unveiled in its river-side location in 1996. Ten years later, they redeveloped the area to create a park and commissioned Hernando’s brother, Alejandro Tejeda, to design a cat that they then reproduced and got various famous Colombian artists to decorate. They’re called The Girlfriends of the Cat.
There are almost 20 flamboyant feline creations on display, all eye-catching and in many cases with specific messages. Catalina’s favourite is No Hay Gato (There’s No Cat) which is covered in the names of dozens of animals in the Bible, with the Biblical passage they are mentioned in. It highlights the fact that cats are not mentioned once anywhere in the Bible although they are such an important companion to humanity, and reflects Cali’s proudly non-conformist individuality; it is a city that follows its own rules and demands to be seen.
In fact Cali was once one of the pre-eminent cities in Latin America and a hub of artists, authors, musicians, dance, sports and cinema. Just across the river from El Gato del Río is Museo La Tertulia, built in the 1960s and home to both the museum of modern art and an independent cinema. The city is known across Colombia as Caliwood as not only is it the current home of Colombian film-making but the first-ever Colombian film was shot here in 1922, entitled ‘Maria’. It’s based on a book by the 19th century author Jorge Isaacs and the film is so famous that not only is there a statue in the city to him, also featuring likenesses of the actress and actor who played the lead roles in the film, but we even saw a black and white mural being painted in San Antonio yesterday evening of them all.
We drive down Roosevelt Avenue through the San Fernando neighbourhood to reach Alameda Market, one of Colombia’s biggest and most famous food markets, covering more than 6000 sq metres and recently celebrating its 75th anniversary. It sells every conceivable type of food from fruit and vegetables to fish and dried foods, spices and candies, and of course vast swathes of meat. As we walk through the narrow alleyways we have to dodge workers carrying huge platters of raw meat, including slabs of offal and a massive plate of cow’s tongues. Elsewhere in the market are electronics, flowers and even herbal medicine for indigenous shamanic practices.
There are also restaurants and cafes and Sunday is the day that Caleños flock to the market to have lunch with their families, often tucking into the tamales that we see being prepared in their hundreds at El Baloncito de Doria. We’re a little ahead of the rush and cross the street to a pretty coffee-shop called La Caleñita where we drink ‘champu’, a sweet, thick drink of corn and lulo fruit and eat a snack of deep-fried plantains. La Caleñita is also full of souvenirs and artworks and while we eat we’re sat next to a near life-sized figure of a glamorous woman, who is also represented in cartoon form on a huge pink fridge. Catalina explains she is called Jovita and is an iconic part of Cali’s history.
She was a woman from a humble background but had a sense of innate style and wealthy ladies embraced her in the early 1960s and gave her fashionable clothes and jewellery to wear and invited her to high society events. As the student protests took off, she became a heroine to the city because she stood side by side with the students against oppression and gave ordinary people a voice against authority. There is now a huge statue of Jovita in El Parque de los Estudiantes which is on a roundabout next to the main highway through the city.
We pass it as we head into the Cali tunnel linking different parts of the city, which is covered in artworks and murals, including of the murdered students. It also features images of local birds, animals, historic Cali citizens and sports stars referencing the fact that in the 60s and 70s Cali was one of the best places to live in Latin America and even hosted the Pan American Games in 1971.
By the 1980s the Cali drug cartel had taken over the city, with the left-wing guerilla groups controlling much of the surrounding area. The city was awash with money from the narcotics trade, but Cali’s glory days came to an abrupt end with the arrest of the Rodriguez brothers, soon after Escobar’s downfall. Suddenly the flow of easy money stopped, but unlike in Medellin where wealthy citizens invested in their city to improve the infrastructure, in Cali the wealthy people moved out and Cali started spiralling into crime and deprivation. There’s definitely an edgy vibe wherever we go.
Despite that, elements of Cali’s decaying grandeur remain with the elegant Ortiz bridge leading us to the beautiful Iglesia de la Ermita. Nearby is Plaza de Cayzedo, the main square in honour of Joaquin de Cayzedo who was the leader of the Independence movement in the south, and more important here than Simon Bolivar. The plaza is surrounded by grand buildings including the city’s cathedral and the neo-classical Palacio de Justicia which was built in 1915.
Unfortunately though the historic downtown centre of the city, which being a Sunday is empty, has similar issues to Medellin’s downtown and the few people we see are all living on the streets and often ravaged by drugs. A famous sculpture of a huge trumpet, in honour of Cali’s reputation as the home of salsa, is a welcome piece of public art and an attempt by the city authorities to keep Cali’s cultural significance alive, but Cali hasn’t regenerated to the same extent as Medellin.
Even though there is an upcoming financial district through which we pass, alongside historic gems like La Merced, Cali’s oldest building, the grand municipal theatre dating from 1926 and the beautiful Iglesia de San Nicolas, Cali is very much a city that requires a sixth sense at all times.
We walk with Catalina through its quiet, run-down streets, and she tells us that on Friday and Saturday nights some of these areas get turned into massive block parties where Cali’s citizens gather and defy the police by setting up soundsystems and dancing salsa until dawn. Apparently it’s a lot of fun, although Catalina warns us the risks of being pick-pocketed, mugged or drugged are very high. We won’t be joining in, however we are keen to learn salsa so we have a real treat planned.
Leaving the downtown area we drive to the Obrero neighbourhood, which is the home of what’s known as ‘vieja guardia’ (old school) salsa. It refers to people, mostly born in the 1950s who danced through the ‘70s and early ‘80s, the golden age of salsa in the city, when Cali became the capital of the dance phenomenon. Salsa music had first started in NYC in the early 1900s being played by Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians but after a change of radio transmitter in the 1930s, residents in Cali, especially the Obrero neighbourhood, started to pick up Cuban radio and salsa suddenly exploded in the city, and within a few years Cali was known to have the fastest salsa in the world - vieja guardia.
One of the most well-known dancers was a man called Edulfamid Díaz, nicknamed Piper Pimienta, who has statues and murals remembering him throughout Obrero, but at the heart of it was a and photographer called Carlos Molina who knew everyone who was anyone in the salsa scene in both Cali and internationally. He started taking photos of salsa stars - both musicians and dancers - in 1968 and a couple of years later met his wife, the formidable Luz. After decades of documenting the scene, Carlos and Luz opened the Museum of Salsa, featuring thousands of Carlos’ photographs in an old lock-up in 2017.
It’s now been officially recognised as an established national museum and it’s here we find ourselves meeting Carlos and Luz themselves, who have agreed to open the museum on a Sunday especially for us, and to bring local teacher, Juan Carlos Idrobo, along to give Coman and myself an hour-long class in the basics. We warm up to Cher’s ‘Believe’, much to Coman’s delight, before getting to grips with the “one two three / five six seven” rhythm and movement of salsa.
It’s a very hot day and there’s no air-conditioning in the museum, just a couple of fans whirring around, so within a few minutes we’re both sweating while Carlos keeps repeating, “uno dos tres / cinco seis siete” in time to the music and guiding us through the rolling movements. Fortunately Carlos Molina has pottered off to keep an eye on his car outside but Luz, and her much-smilier sister, keep a critical eye on our hip movements and coordination. By the end of the hour we feel like we’ve done a full-on cardio class, and the ice-cold can of beer they provide to cool us down feels very well deserved. I loved the experience, while Coman’s just glad it’s over.
Carolina and Lupolo drop us off back at the hotel and after we’ve freshened up we head off for a late lunch at the very lovely Tierra Dentro café, just around the corner, and spend a leisurely Sunday afternoon chilling in its garden drinking fruit smoothies. That evening, after packing once more for a new destination, we have a light dinner at a pizza restaurant just across the street called Sisary.
It’s been a brief but enlightening stay in Cali, however it’s time to leave for somewhere much smaller, quieter and more relaxing than Colombia’s edgiest city… the white-washed colonial treasure that is Popayan.
