COLOMBIA

Cali

Arriving in Cali at around 8am, our priority was to get a nice cheap hotel and change some money from Dollars to Pesos and then go and explore a little of this seemingly very large city. Asking the taxi driver to take us to a cheap but nice hotel, he proceeded to take us to Palma Nueva, with pcitures of naked women all over the place, this place seemed to be as Jay noted perhaps a place where men took prostitutes back (it even had a toliet roll box next to the bed for cleaning up!) and it felt pretty scummy and dirty, totally incomparable with the greatness of Casa Olimpia but it was going to have to do for one night before we moved on to Bogota or Medellin. ON walking around for a while, it seemed like an extremely hectic city with so much noise, so many people and so much pollution and close heat that at times it was unbearable! The streets were full of markets and hustle and bustle and the city was just a little bit of a mess and could do with a good clear up! Admidst all the chaos however there were some rather nice buildings to see.

On arrival at the square in our desperate hunt for something edible, there were some nice surrounding important looking buildings as well as a picturesque church on the corner and in the square itself were palms surrounding a statue of whom I'm not sure as we didnt get over to it as we were just too hungry to be looking at historic monuments.

After more walking without success in finding anything half decent looking to eat, we decided upon a greasy looking open air cafe serving deep fried everything and just ended up with some sort of deep fried cheesy dough balls which weren't actually as bad as they looked and did the job of filling us up for a little while at least! Continuing on our tour of the city, we were told San Antonio was worth checking out but proved to be more noisy, polluted, dirty roads although there was a nice dome on a church but nothing more to be impressed by. We headed back and continued over the river where there were a couple of pretty white bridges (although still riddled with litter, dirt and people selling things) and in the distance a very pretty cathedral/church of which style I'd not seen before in South America and almost looked like something out of a fairy tale with it's white colour and numerous spires although not grandiose in size, it was certainly worth a picture or two!

Beyond this was the tallest building on the horizon and by far the tallest building in the city, the Torre de Cali Hotel which we were told we could go up to the terrace at the top to see the city and take photos which we did and it did indeed prove to be worth it with fantastic views across the city which from one side seemed simply to go on and on forever into the horizon!

It was certainly good to get the aerial view in order to get your bearings of where things were around the city. After a little more walking, we found a nice area with restaurants and bars. We stopped in a restaurant and had the baby beef which was fantastic quality and almost as good as Argentean steak! Very tasty indeed although I'm not sure why they insist on putting a fried banana with every dish they serve up, I just can't see the appeal of those things! Apparently this was the place to come out at night for drinks but becuase it was only wednesday it wouldn't be so busy. After lunch we returned to our hotel to rest a while and then headed back to the area and it was pretty dead as we had been told it would so after sharing a beer tower, we headed back to the hotel for an early night with the intention of getting an early bus to Bogota or Medellin.

The next morning we got up around 9am and decided to head to Medellin as that was the next bus. Now on the 8 hour journey and seeing some rather beautiful countryside with argricultural fields and grass with the backdrop of mountains and many palm trees and billowing cumulus clouds. SOmething tells me Medellin is going to be rather hot as we get closer and closer to the Caribbean!