Cali Pachanguero gets discovered

Tuesday, August 29th

It´s so exciting to be in this city where salsa is heard and danced everywhere! However, before we plunge into the city we must get a few chores done. Alexey has been having a few personal issues to deal with in the US so he needs a little internet and phone calling time early in the day. We walked to a cyber cafe at the EXITO super market but it´s not what we expected so we reach for a cab to get us to the ChipiChape shopping center.

In here we get into the Matrix internet cafe and use their phone and internet services for a couple of hours. We have promised our hosts that we will be back at home at noon to have lunch with them. See, here most working people come back to their homes for lunch most days of the week. Either they elect to cook or have a maid who helps in the house with chores such as cooking. The lady who helps in our host´s house is Lida, a black women from the Choco region. Her food is delicious!!! We were treated to a bandeja paisa like dish which was out of this world!

We then stayed back chilling with Margarita and talking about a bunch of local issues. She runs a chemical laboratory where they manufacture drugs for animals such as cows and horses. But it was time for her to get back to work since she wanted to come back early. In Cali as well as in other Colombian cities, Margarita cannot drive during peak hours on certain days of the week depending on the ending digit of her license plates. This is called Pico y Placa here. Today, Tuesday, is her day of restriction.

Since Margarita is now gone back to work, Alexey finished off his internet duties at home, and I put a big dent on La Aventura del Tocador de Senoras which I have been reading, we decided to take a taxi out into the city. It was nearly 2PM so we need to be very efficient in our tourist activities. The taxi takes us through territory which we already recognize and soon we are in downtown. He dropped us off at the Plaza de Caycedo which is Cali´s main square. Alexey and I walked around this plaza for a little while and discovered the city hall building (very pretty and colonial white structure) and saw the working people doing their everyday business. We walked through a passway where tons of machine typists filled out forms for their customers in the middle of the way! There must have been 20 of these people! I am not really sure why their services are still needed in the age of computers and internet but hey, they seem happy doing it and we are happy seeing that a bit of the early 80s is still alive.

Alexey tried a coconut drink and ate the ¨manzana¨ that grows inside old coconuts. We also visited the famours church known as La Ermita (Alexey thinks it looks like a gingerbread house) and walked around some more by the Cali river to get the flavor of the city. Following our stroll, we went to see the oldest church in Cali and got into the Museum of Gold hosted by the Banco de la Republica. This was a cool museum with tons of information on the exploitation and use of gold by the indigenous of this area about 500 years ago and before. However, Alexey went to the ATM and when he came back, the museum closed (sorry man).

Now we walked pass a plaza full of birds in from of the Iglesia de San Francisco and through the connecting streets high into a small mountain at the top of which there is a park and another church: San Antonio. The views from here are impressive! The houses below seem to have spanish tile on the roofs. The bells in the church signaled it was 6PM and time to go to mass so we fled.

Now below, in the heart of the city, we got onto a taxi once again and headed back home so we can meet Margarita and Felipe and go out to dinner somewhere. We reached the house and our host got there soon after. It was shortly after 6:30PM and we just sat outside by the porch to talk about the day. She tells us that the drive tonight is quite dangerous but the dad of a friend of hers did it a few weeks back. She calls the friend to ask for more information. At this point we are thinking of leaving tomorrow for the border with Ecuador. The trip is quite long to the border (about 10 hours) with curvy roads, major guerrilla activity and unknowns along the way. Margarita´s friend tells us that the Bolivariano bus has ¨bought the vaccine¨ or basically paid the guerrillas to allow them to transit with their busses through this territory without hassle. However, most of the transit through this region, for some reason, happens at night and if we want to reach the border before the close for the day, we will need to leave tonight!!! The three of us looked at all of our options considering safety, border crossing details, and convenience, and determined that leaving tonight makes more sense.

The bad thing about our decision is that we won´t be able to hang out longer with our host family. They are REALLY cool and at least we want to take them out for dinner. So we made our bags and went out. Margarita´s daughter, who is studying in Bogota at the moment, was supposed to be featured in the Colombian equivalent of Business Week so we went around looking for this magazine but it was not out yet. So we headed to dinner at a place called Crepes y Waffles. This is a cool place that employs exclusively single mothers (wonder if this would seem discriminatory in the US). The crepes were excellent!! I had the strogonoff and was delighted! Felipe had dessert but the rest of us were wayyyy to full for this. Now it was time for our departure :(

We had already placed our bags in the trunk before we went to dinner so we headed straight for the bus terminal. Once there, we bid farewell to our wonderful hosts and bought tickets to Ipiales, which is the Colombian border town with Ecuador. The tickets were 35K pesos and we waiting for the bus on the 3rd floor of the terminal. Shortly we were called in the bus and took our seats. Unfortunately, we got stuck with seats all the way in the back of this EuroVan small bus. This meant that our seats did not recline!!! We will see how it goes and if we can sleep. Someone comes to peak into the bus and it´s the figure of a lady who works for this bus line. Now, Alexey and I are fully aware that this is probably the most dangerous zone that we are to cross in our trip. The guerrillas can stop us anytime and if they get to see our American passports we would be fresh meant for them. We had already agreed that we were, under no circumstances, to speak any form of English on the bus. We almost blew our cover near the bus driver who noticed that Alexey did not speak Spanish but I told him he was an Italian friend. To add to our worries, the lady who came in the bus informs us that for our security she will go ahead and videotape our faces to keep a record. She goes one by one through everyone on board and gets a record of how we look like. The door closes and were are just plain scared!