Venturer's Log: Cali

Want to know something that isn't a secret whatsoever and that I will happily shout to the world time and time again? 

I BLOODY LOVE FOOD.

And I love to eat. 

And to be sick and not be able to eat anything is extremely depressing. The last few days I've had enough plain white rice to last me a lifetime. One evening Santa Marta we went to a pizza place and I had the crusts off Nick's pizza because they didn't have any sauce and were made with plain white flour. 

I felt like Cinderella, only being able to eat her family's crusts. 

Thankfully, it is several days on from my last post where I explained that I had traveller's bug, and fortunately I feel like I am nearing the end of it. Today I was able to eat half of my hotel's breakfast, and then at lunch Nick and I shared two dishes, of which I was able to eat one before feeling full (I doggy-bagged the other one so I can eat it later). 

I can tell my stomach has shrunk due to not being able to eat anything, which is unsurprising. As mentioned, I've been surviving off plain white rice, plain (salted) crackers, white bread rolls, and the aforementioned pizza crusts. As a result, my body must have thought that I was shutting down and closed the functioning of my stomach - why bother having one if all you're going to subject it to is nonsense? 

Genuinely though, I am grateful to be on the other side of it. We were both gutted that we weren't able to make the most of Santa Marta as walking around in the evening we realised that the town had what we thought are some of the best eateries and bars in the Caribbean coast we've seen so far, and we were both gutted that we weren't able to go out and do a pub crawl. Of course, Nick could've still gone without me, but nobody really enjoys doing that alone do they? 

Cali

We are officially onto phase 2 of our trip in Colombia: The South. We spent about 3 weeks on the Caribbean Coast which was beautiful of course but I'm glad that we're venturing further inland. 

We flew from Santa Marta to Cali late last night, arriving after midnight. There was a somewhat dodgy walk from the airport to the nearby airport hotel we had booked - I thought it was much closer to the terminal when I originally booked it but we had to go past a roundabout and under a pedestrian bridge where there were a few homeless people which was a little uncomfortable, and then we passed by a big truck that had pulled over on the side of the road, where someone was clearly smoking a cigarette from the driver's door.

"We're going to give this truck a wide berth" Nick told me. 

"We're going to walk past quickly and confidently" I replied. 

We were in agreement. 

Anyway, it was fine and we got to our hotel without issue. It was 1am and we passed out quickly. 

Then this morning I woke up and chose danger: I was going to chance breakfast. 

Now, I'm all for taking it easy while I'm ill, but 72 hours of bland food is way way way too long for me. So I browsed the breakfast options and decided that I would go for... Pretty much everything, just to taste flavour again. 

I didn't manage to finish everything but boy oh boy was it good to eat things that have TASTE! 

And yes, I saw those fruit loops and said to myself "that looks like a bit of me"

After breakfast, we checked out and took a taxi to our hostel in San Antonio, the bohemian neighbourhood of Cali. We're staying at Viajero, which is part of a hostel chain, and this one has free salsa classes every evening which I tried my hand in today and was great fun! 

Cali is the city of salsa, so we're now debating about whether or not to go out and shake our hips in a salsa bar this evening. Nick is tempted and I think it could be really fun to go on a night out (which we've not done since Barranquilla) but I'm also a bit nervous that I've had some not-so-fun times on the toilet today - once immediately after breakfast, and once again after lunch (which was DELICIOUS by the way!) 

So I'm a bit nervous that any drinking, and especially drinking alcohol, could be quite harmful to whatever is still happening in my gut. 

Written the following day...

Yeah so we went out. 

A large group of people from the hostel went too. First we walked about 10 minutes to a 'salsa street' which is a huge open-air street party with music blasting and hundreds of people all dancing together, most of them dancing a variation of salsa. I had gone to the salsa class provided by the hostel earlier but Nick had missed it so I spent some time showing him a few of the moves that I had learned there, and we danced together a bit. 

My tummy was still feeling a bit iffy, but I had decided that I wasn't going to drink alcohol from doing it too much additional damage. Dancing was making it churn a little bit though, and I wonder if that was from moving my body around and putting it through different angles, as well as keeping my core engaged, so we didn't spend too much time dancing and watched a lot of the other people as well. It almost felt similar to the street party we went to in Barranquilla except the atmosphere last night was more local, and there wasn't any foam and flour being thrown around. 

We were in this salsa street for about an hour before our group leader chaperoned us a bit further up the road where we climbed onto a party bus. When we had been told about the party bus earlier in the evening, Nick said he was envisioning a bus similar to the ones in London, with flashing lights and maybe a disco ball - I never went on one in London so I couldn't really picture it in my mind, but the one that turned up was nothing like the one that I was thinking of. The front of it was completely lit up in neon and there was a bench that went round the edge of the bus and then there was a floor space between them all so that people could dance. There were also two pole dancing poles that were cemented in on each side of the bus, and more neon lights inside as well as a foam machine and bright flashing lights all over the place. 

 

To be honest I thought the bus was a bit embarrassing. It was like we had a massive sign on our foreheads saying "foreign gringos." But we drove around the city for maybe two hours and while Cali seems like a super residential city, there is LOADS of street art everywhere and it was super cool to see it all. I wasn't drinking so I felt like I was able to actually enjoy the scenery as we passed it by. It was also nice to socialise with some of the other people who were on the bus and I hope that we'll be able to get to see the people that we connected with again over the next few days while we're still in Cali. 

After the bus we were dropped off outside 10-60 which is a big club in Cali. It has 5 different rooms of different music genres. By now, I was really not in the mood (being sober and feeling a bit worse for wear with my tummy still churning) so I would've been happy to have gone back to the hostel at this point but I know Nick was enjoying himself and I didn't want to be a party pooper so we went inside and checked out the various rooms. I thought the club itself was fine but for Friday night supposedly being one of the biggest night for going out in Cali I thought it was quite empty. Maybe because we were there at 1am and Colombians arrive much later? And perhaps it did start to fill up a bit more by the time we were leaving around 2:30am but it still felt quite empty so maybe Friday night isn't the one, or perhaps it's not actually a particularly popular club. 

 

Anyway, we got an Uber back to the hostel with some friends we'd made throughout the evening and then I went to bed, while Nick stayed up chatting with other hostel guests. I think it was probably a good decision to go out ultimately, even though I was feeling rough, but I do think it is important for us to socialise with other people when we can and I did book this hostel specifically because it has a lot of activities and a social vibe. While I've been happy to stay in some of the hostels we've stayed in, none of them have had much of an atmosphere to meet other travellers so it's nice to be somewhere where that opportunity is more readily provided.