CaliSep 27, 2009
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After a quick trip (2hrs) from Popayan, we arrived in Cali. It's farther north and is in a big valley and is very hot. It was the hottest place we've been to so far. It was easily over 30 degrees every day and quite humid. The weird part is that Lisa found it to be more uncomfortable than me.
It's a very modern looking city with lots of trees. It's a big change from most other South American cities. It's not in a bowl surrounded by mountains and isn't full of old brick buildings. It is famous for it's 'Cali girls'. It is known as a major center for plastic surgery, if you catch my drift... It's also famous for salsa dancing. All this combines for a large nightclub scene, but unfortunately we were visiting during the week, so it was quite dead. There really isn't much else to do here. Cali does have Colombia's best zoo however, so we checked it out. I know, I know, another zoo. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz But this one was pretty amazing, and it had a great aquarium, which is Lisa's favourite part. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to feed the spider monkeys a coke this time. Maybe in the next one...
We decided to check out downtown after, as the main plazas are usually nice. Cali's downtown is pretty bleak and dirty and is full of street people. After a few minutes of being harassed for change, I had had enough. It's not that I don't feel bad for them, but they don't ever ask the locals for money. Just straight to the tourists. Very annoying.
There's not too much else to say about Cali. We stayed in a good hostel with lots of info and internet on site. Though prices seem to be getting higher and higher the farther north we go, and the people seem better off, which goes hand in hand I suppose. But it seems that the better off people are, the more very poor people there are. I guess that also goes hand in hand. There are a lot more choices for food, we splurged on sushi one night, which was excellent. But a couple of days here, and we were ready to move on, on to Manizales, in the Zona Cafetera (coffee country).
