Venturer's Log: Cali II

Well... Things had to go wrong eventually. 

Today we were supposed to be heading to Popayan, 3 hours south from Cali. Did we make it there? No. Did we even leave Cali? 

Again... No.

We checked out of our hostel perfectly fine this morning and then enjoyed the day wandering around town and heading back to a market we went to yesterday. We had dinner and then grabbed an Uber to the bus terminal to catch a bus to Popayan. Further south we go!

Except... We couldn't. 

An interesting thing about Colombian bus stations that we have noticed is that there isn't just one ticket booth to purchase your bus tickets from. There are multiple bus companies that offer the same routes, and each of them have their own ticket office. This means that the same terminal could have 3 or 4 different companies and touts trying to get you to purchase tickets from their ticket offices. It can be a little overwhelming if you don't know what company you want to go with, and I'm sure that most locals have their favourites. 

We, being gringos, have not got a favourite. So we (Nick) decided that we (Nick) would ask the information desk for some information about which was the recommended company for our journey to Popayan. 

The woman behind the information desk was very helpful. 

"Where are you heading to?" she asked.

"Popayan," Nick said.

"Oh fabulous the best ticket office is probably that one over ther---- uhhh, Popayan did you say?" she said. 

It turns out that some people had blocked the road between Cali and Popayan for the day, striking about some reason or another. It seems to be a somewhat common strike tactic as there are multiple news articles with similar occurrences (April 2023, August 2023). 

So we needed to rethink. We'd already checked out of our hostel and it's fully booked out tonight, plus we don't know when the strikes will be over. If it's tomorrow then we could potentially head down to Popayan tomorrow, but there's no guarantee that they'll be over by then. 

We've booked an Ibis for this evening (which thankfully has air conditioning and I'm hopeful it has hot water showers as well) and tonight's plan is to figure out what the heck we're going to do. We had 3 nights in Popayan planned, including a day trip to nearby Silvia which we were going to do tomorrow - we're obviously not going to do that anymore. Then we were going to go further south to San Agustin, a super important pre-Columbian archaeological site. However, I'm not sure if we're going to get the opportunity to go there either anymore. 

The lady at the information desk suggested that we could take a bus directly to Tatacoa desert (which is where we're heading to after San Agustin) from Cali by going north and then back south - this is an 11 hour journey which is something I would rather avoid, but apparently we can purchase bus tickets that have seats that fully recline and travel overnight. So perhaps this is something that we will look at, although I think we might decide to fly to Neiva instead and then take a bus to Tatacoa. 

Either way, we're in Cali tonight. We might end up staying in Cali for the rest of the week, as we've both expressed interest in seeing more of the city. The hostel we have been staying at was really pretty great, with free salsa lessons and a really cool social vibe, as well as a gorgeous pool, so it would be nice to get another room there, but we're not suuuuuper keen on staying in a dorm and if there are only dorms left there for the rest of the week then that's not something we'd ideally like to do. 

Additionally, Nick may be starting to get heat rash around his armpits which might be as a result of not having air conditioning for the last few nights at this hostel. Cali is very warm, it's been 30+ degrees every day we've been here, so AC would be ideal. And a swimming pool would be pretty great as well, just to give us something to relax around if we are going to be here for the rest of the week. 

OH and another thing! I received an email from the hostel in Popayan that we were supposed to be staying at who informed us that there was an error in the system and that they have relocated us to a different hostel which is further out of the city centre and has no reviews on Hostelworld. I'm sure it would be fine but I replied saying that it was insufficient for us and that we would prefer to cancel and receive a refund in full. Hopefully they'll give this to us and it means that we don't have to go through the hassle of cancelling our original booking and losing our deposit. 

As Nick and I sat in the taxi on the way from the bus terminal to the Ibis tonight I turned to him and said "can you imagine if we had perservered through the road block today just to get to Popayan hours and hours late to find out that our accommodation had been changed to somewhere we didn't even want."

To be completely honest, I don't hate the idea of staying in Cali longer, providing we can find somewhere that is going to suit our needs. I really like Cali, although I haven't seen that much of it. I'd like to get to know it a bit better, and it is difficult to get to know somewhere when you're only there for three days. 

So, no Popayan for now. And likely no San Agustin either, which is a shame. Nick was very sweet and apologised for things going wrong, but it's not his fault and to be honest I'm not even that mad about it - these things happen when you travel. Is it frustrating? Yes, absolutely. But I know Nick wasn't even that bothered by Popayan and San Agustin, and while yes I am definitely keen to go to both locations, I can't be too annoyed about it because it means that we can spend longer in Cali (although finding somewhere new to stay might be a bit frustrating). 

And I'm right as well - we need to expect the unexpected on this trip. Yes that means sometimes it will be stressful and worrying, but for the most part we need to be able to go with the flow and adapt to changes like this on the fly. And I'm ok with that - it's what makes this more of an adventure.