To get to Cali we bussed 5 hours from Santa Marta to Cartagena and took a 45 minute taxi ride (still only $10) from the bus terminal to the airport. Then we waited in the airport for three hours, flew the 1.5 hour flight, hopped on a 30 minute city bus to the bus terminal, where we caught a cab another 15 minutes to our hostel. WHEW!
Salsa Dancing
Cali is the salsa dancing capital of Colombia, so by default it is the salsa dancing capital of the world. We chose this specific hostel because they had free breakfast and free salsa lessons. We arrive in the middle of a salsa lesson so the owner helped us throw our bags in our room and we ran to the patio to jump in on the lesson. After 30 minutes they declared us expiertos (experts) and put us in a cab with 6 other gringos bound for "the best place to salsa dance on a Saturday night". (Plot twist: we were definitely not expiertos yet.) An extra stroke of luck is that it happened to be El Dia de San Valentin, Colombia´s take on Valentine´s day: The Day of Love and Friendship. So the club was PACKED and we were the only non-Colombians. We managed to make our way to the bar and I tried to order us 2 bottles of Poker (cheap Colombian beer.) No can do. They only sell pitchers and bottles of liquor (yeah, bottles!) past midnight. So I ordered us a pitcher, which turned out to be 5 Poker´s dumped into two giant cups. At a price of $11, we were happy to cheers to that.
Next came the actual salsa dancing, easier said than done. We were terrible and people laughed us at but we had a good time. At one point we were really starting to get the hang of it and then a song came on and every single person left the dance floor to sit at a table which they had apparently claimed ahead of time. We nervously kept dancing since we didn´t have a table until one nice Colombian came up and told us that the song was a "singing song" not a "dancing song". It sounded the same as all the other songs, but there you go. So we retreated from the dance floor and looked like idiots since we obviously didn´t know any of the words and didn´t have a table. Oops!
Keegan and I managed to have 2 cool moments. The first was when we were dancing and this older, very skilled Colombian couple grabbed us and danced with us for a song. The guy was crazy good so I just tried to follow his lead the best I could. I didn´t see, but I think Keegan panicked since guys are supposed to lead in salsa dancing. We both survived and the Colombian couple went away laughing so everyone was happy.
At another point, they played a few American songs and then people got really excited and started dancing with us because WE knew the words. We got lots of high fives until the Colombian songs came back on and they realized we still couldn´t salsa dance.
At 3am we were exhausted from the day´s travels so we hopped in a cab and headed back to the hostel. Good thing because the other gringos stayed out until 5am!
Futbol!
In the cab ride to the salsa club, the other gringos we were with offered to let us tag along to a futbol game that was going on the next day. We enthusiastically agreed immediately.
The next afternoon (the rest of the gringos were pretty hungover, so the day started around noon) we headed downtown to buy the tickets. One guy was too good at Spanish for his own good and he managed to attract about 7 scalpers before we got to the ticket office. We became a massive spectacle until we finally convinced him to stop haggling with them over tickets that would likely be fake and just buy from the ticket booth since the tickets were only $9 each (the sign said 12 but I think we got a gringo sympathy discount.)
After that debacle the rest of the game went smoothly. Keegan and I stopped before hand to eat some dinner: 25 cent empanadas from a shop right by the stadium.
We met up with the other gringos inside the stadium (yeah, gringos really stick out here. It was pretty easy and we didn´t have any way of contacting them.) The game was really fun and Cali won 2-0!
The stadium wasn´t packed but the fans around us were passionate. I got a few high fives with each goal and yelled some spanish curse words at the ref. You know, trying to blend in.
As we were leaving the game, the local news station saw the big group of gringos and immediately ran over to us. I was elected the best Spanish speaker in the group so I got to give an interview! Hilarious. She asked me where I was from (United States), which team I was rooting for (trick question to try to get me killed, Cali obviously), if I was happy with the results (test to see if I watched the game I guess. Cali won, so yeah) and finally "say something to the camera". I panicked here and went with an "hola" and was promptly giggled at. I made the other gringos jump in to save me, and they went with a Vamos Cali! so it ended up alright.
15 minutes of fame!
We decided to stay one extra day in Cali since we have a 10 hour bus ride ahead of us. That didn´t really work out because we decided to go on a run in the morning and 5 blocks in I tripped and face planted, taking two good chunks out of my knee. I hobbled back to the hostel and our "explore Cali" day became a "catch up on blog posts and back up the photos from the camera" day. (Fear not, I´m totally fine. Walking just opens the scabs up and then people think I´m crazy walking around with blood dripping off my knees.)
We were supposed to head to Ecuador after this but sadly our bag and passports were stolen 7 hours from the Ecuador border. :( Now, 3 days later, armed with new emergency passports (thank you US embassy!!) we are OFFICIALLY back on our way to Ecuador and we should be there by tomorrow morning!
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