Cali

Day 173 – A good choice not to stay

In the hope of making it to Cali before the modern art museum closed we left Pasto early for our 9 hour bus ride.  For the last 6 months we’ve been doing this sort of trip during the night to avoid major boredom, but in this case we decided that avoiding a hijacking or better still a kidnapping outranked avoiding boredom.  At least the scenery for the first few hours was impressive, deep valleys covered in very steep farmland or thick forest, you can see why FARC (the main rebel group) can hide there so easily.  The military presence on the road was also quite apparent, especially bridges, each of which seemed to be guarded by at least 4 army officers (most of whom didn’t look older than 15, but I’m guessing that the average age of FARC soldiers is sadly even less).

Stopped in the middle of nowhere for lunch.

After various delays we finally pulled into Cali too late to make it to the art museum.  Instead we headed to the main entertainment district in search of a few beers and dinner.  Cali is primarily known amongst backpackers for its nightlife and ready availability of drugs.  Neither of these are really our scene, so we opted to head straight on Medellín that night.  When we got to the entertainment strip it was dead, the only place that was anywhere near full was an ice-cream parlour, so we stopped in for a milkshake and a brownie.

We then wandered the streets for a little while before heading into a Mexican place for some tacos and beers while we looked at the ‘excursion’ offerings provided on our upcoming Alaska / Canada cruise. 

After wandering up and down for a little while longer we finally came across a not completely deserted bar playing passable music clips on big screens (a lot of 80s and 90s rock / pop!) where we happily passed the last couple of hours people watching until our night bus.