Salsa Capital - Blogabond

We came to Cali in the morning and started with an argument with the taxi drivers so we didn’t take a taxi from the normal taxi stand since we were sure they was ripping us of so instead we went out and stopped a taxi at the street and in that way we got it for almost half the price.
We got to the hotel and just went to bed in our room trying to recover some sleep that we had lost the night before on the freezing bus.
At about midday we started hearing other voices outside our room and I and Steffi looked at each other “is it Swedish?” “No I think it’s Norwegian, or maybe Danish” and we sat there trying to figure out

svenskcolombianchilenarna

where they came from and then we realized that they were Swedish only from Sollentuna but with Colombian and Chilean roots. We started talking to them and it ended up with all of us going out together. After dinner we first sat and drank at the hostel and after that we went to a huge Salsa place since Cali is the capital of Salsa this was really a must and we had a great night out! Loads of people, good atmosphere, and just good times over all, and also we finally got to see our dwarves although this time they weren’t waiters but muscular dancers with minimalistic clothing.

frukost!

It was a long night and the next day we both felt a bit “sick” so we didn’t do much at all. Even at night I still felt sick this time bad for real and not just hung-over so we stayed in that night and prepared for our next bus ride.
We had decided that we should take the night bus again because it was another 11hour bus ride but at about mid day the owner of the hostel told us that the night bus to the border town was not such a good idea since a lot of the buses had been robbed and the closer to Christmas we got the higher the risk was of getting stopped.
We quickly decided that we should go by day instead but since we were hoping to celebrate Christmas in Otavalo we didn’t want to get there just the days before.
So we rushed to the bus station and took instead an 8 hour bus to Pasto in Colombia. Children were staring at me and Steffi since we were the only tourists on the bus and one of the girls asked if she could buy my eyes. When we arrived to the terminal we decided to stay the night there and leave early in the morning to Otavalo. Only problem was that we had not thought of the altitude changes and since we were now at almost 2800 m it got really cold (you could see your mouth making little clouds as you breathed) so we pulled on almost all the clothes we had and just tried to stay warm. Then finally at 6 in the morning we considered it safe to keep travelling so we took the bus the last 3 hours to the border and then crossed over into Ecuador.

Chris

Sorry about not being really up to date with the posting but now we are almost there!

written by

Steffi & Chris on December 19, 2009 from Cali, Colombia

from the travel blog: 212 days

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