'Cali es Cali'

Cali es Cali, lo demás es loma. Translation: Cali is Cali, and the rest is hill (ie, not as good as Cali). It’s scrawled on the walls, on stickers, posters, and, is apparently the best way to make friends here…. you just say the first three words and the locals will finish the rest for you. I had no intention of coming to Cali, but when the difficulties with the border crossing waylaid my plans to enter Colombia I was just so focused on finding a way across the border that I did little to no thinking about where to go except simply wherever the bus would take me.

So I arrive here after about a 30 hour journey, with a stomach bug, 2 hours sleep, and no clue what I’m doing here, or where I’m venturing next. I had written down the name of one hostel before I lost my Ecuadorian internet and so I guess that’s where I was heading to see if I could snag a bed. I was in luck, and as it turns out, the hostel was in a sweet location only a block’s walk to Parque del Perro, which is surrounded by food and bars. The place is just like a really sick share house; cool vibe, great people, Vegemite on toast for brekkie…. (Aussie owner) what more could a girl want?

I wake up not feeling too bad, so decide to give my stomach a real test by drinking the tap water (apparently it’s fine here) and going on a street food tour to eat a whole bunch of random stuff. The dude who runs the tour is actually Dutch, and he started the company after getting loads of questions from travellers about where to eat, and could they accompany him when he goes to the market. At first he would take them to the market in exchange for them buying him lunch and over the past few years it has developed into more of an actual walking tour with a bit of Cali history, combined with street food of course.

The street art here is awesome; there are so many stories behind the works. This one with Gabriel García Márquez quotes him saying “the day that shit has any value the poor will be born without an asshole” . There are a tonne of others with similar social commentary scrawled across the walls as you walk through town; it really gives you a good flavour of the history here and the social issues the locals see as important.

Also, a growing number of women are taking to the streets, using graffiti as a form of resistance art to challenge preconceptions about gender, sexual harassment and violence. This image of the girl being stitched back together was done on the exterior wall of a school, so is sending a message to the youth of Cali; start at the grassroots to make positive, longterm change. Other works depicted women walking down the street being cat called and other similar objectification that women are subject to all over the world.

The neighbourhood we start off in its known as a bit of an arty neighbourhood; there’s loads of little studios with a variety of styles of works in them. As we wander through the streets we manage to sneak a look into one dude’s studio where he is making sculptures from recycled parts that are donated to him. The ones pictured he’s been working on for years as he relies on parts to be donated… so there is likely years to go before finishing some of these cool pieces. He’s not doing it for money but has plans to make his studio into a museum one day.

There’s heaps of art and posters pasted around town promoting Cali as the place to be, and how to be the ideal Cali citizen.. “say hello to passers by” etc etc. For years this city has had a bad rep; drugs, violence etc. So, they are working really hard to bring it back to the beauty of a city it once was, and, to be honest, I haven’t felt unsafe at all in my time here; The streets are super clean, the locals are very friendly, smiles, waves and greetings are exchanged in the street with strangers, and you can see how incredibly proud of their city they are: ‘Cali es Cali…’

Everything you see has a story, unlike a lot of the graffiti back home. One image depicted children laying injured in coca fields with planes flying above spraying herbicide across the fields. Sadly, with the war on drugs, the government takes to dramatic measures and in 2000 they signed a deal (pressured by the US) to spray the coca plantations. It’s super controversial and is, a lot of the time, carried out by US contractors. This is often done in inhabited areas and leads to major health problems with the locals; in some areas 80% of the indigenous children have fallen sick with skin rashes, diarrhoea, fevers, and eye infections. Sometimes wrongly suspected fields are sprayed, so not only do they injure innocent people, but they also kill the farmer’s entire crop. Even worse, this has done little to reduce the availability of cocaine on the streets. All for what? For a while they actually stopped doing it, but sadly they are about to start it back up again.

In another park we walk through there is a statue of the ‘beauty queen’, Jovita. Her story is an important folklore story of the city. Jovita was hit with the ugly stick (the statue even depicts her true ‘beauty’), and she wanted to be a singer… Only problem was, she was a shit singer. But, that didn’t stop her. She continued to sing in public to the point where, apparently the locals didn’t know how to shut her up. She was crowned a “Queen” out of sympathy by a university, which she took quite seriously and started behaving like a real Queen, leading parades, sitting at events on the right side of the mayor and dressing extravagantly. Her funeral was one of the busiest in Cali history; goes to show you can have no skills, behave like a mad woman, and the public will love you for it… ‘Cali es Cali’.

We stumbled into a bar owned by a local ‘discomanio’ (record maniac). The walls are full of old vinyl and Louis Armstrong is playing over the speakers. So old school and so cool. The dude who owns the joint was such a legend and was only too willing to show us some of the old vinyl and play us some choice tunes. These bars usually open up mid afternoon and are shut up by 10/11pm, giving those locals a place to come sit, and listen to music.. often salsa too, but these joints are not the places that draw the salsa dancing crowd. I could have stayed in here all afternoon butchering Spanish with the owner and listening to his choice of tunes.

So about the street food…. We had chontaduro empanadas, mango ceviche (green mango sort of cooked in lime juice and vinegar, served with condensed milk, salt, pepper and cinnamon.. Interesting, but actually, considering I don’t even like mango and was going in for thirds and fourths it must have been ok). We had buñuelos, ceviche de camaron, rice pudding, some great and not so great random drinks made of fuck knows what, tamales, catfish, blood sausage, some random soups, a shit tonne of local fruits, local cheeses, Colombian coffee, wood-fire made marshmallows, and probably a bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten. The old dude who made the woodfire marshmallows was such a dude. He was just sitting there with his little table of marshmallows giving people fist bumps, thumbs ups and with the absolutely HUGEST smile on his face.

I just love the local scene here; the streets and market are a buzz with locals (in fact, I think we are the only tourists I saw in the market). As we wander through, enjoying the food as we go I am constantly stopped by locals enquiring where I’m from, where I’ve been travelling and whether I like Colombia. They tell me the local stories behind some of the foods…. like that the marshmallows make boys boners full of good sperm, and the ladies super fertile. It’s such a friendly and happy local scene that they are only too willing to share with visitors.

Interestingly, most of the street food vendors here are illegal; very few actually have licences (and pay taxes), and the rest just do it illegally. All of the foods we ate ranged between $0.60 AUD and a couple of dollars. So cheap and so delicious, so I was not bothered by the fact that I could get fined if a cop caught me… pretty sure they have bigger fish to fry in Cali anyway. By the time we finished I was absolutely stuffed full of deliciousness, and it was hot… so I bailed on the afternoon walking tour activity… CBF being a tourist sometimes. Plus, the hostel has hammocks and a rooftop that was calling my name.

Didn’t get up to much else in Cali…. didn’t even do Salsa… or watch it. But some rando did use me to practice his moves one afternoon… so I basically just butchered it while he did all the right steps, over and over again… so if that counts then I guess I did salsa afterall.

In my down time there I did some rough planning on where to go and what I want to see in Colombia, and basically, without any detours I’m already booked up til mid Nov… So before I follow my fellow hostel housemates and end up in Cali for weeks on end, I decide to make a move… Salento bound :)