After a night spent trying to find some places to go in Cali myself, I gave up and instead opted for a new approach of just making a whole long list of places that were recommended in various pamphets and brochures and then used google maps to find where they were in the city to finally plot a route and then hope that a taxi driver can understand my directions.
I woke late the next morning, already having dismiessed a trip to visit Lake Calima and all its water sports, as it required a 4 hour round trip, and was about to go and ask for a taxi when there was a knock at my door and the hostel receptionist informed me that she had managed to find a friend who she trusted that would act as a private taxi for me, escorting me around as many places as I wished to visit for as long as it took.
Although not perfect, as he was not an attractive female who spoke fluent English, I followed the arguement that beggars cant be choosers, and to be fair he was a good driver, knew the location of all the places that I had marked and was sociable enough chatting to me in Spanish for the duration, even taking a few of his own snaps and entering one of the museums instead of just sitting and waiting in his car.
One of the good things about travelling to Colombia is that it is a place that is not yet totally spoilt by tourists and tourism alike, and so it is still possible to be the only gringo within eye sight, and this gives you a bit of a feeling of experiencing something genuine and unique.
A good thing about travelling off season is that there are even less foreigners around than normal, so the queues to get in places are much shorter, if they exist at all.
However, one of the bad things about travelling off season is that during the off-season many of the places you might like to visit are closed for either renovation or just from lack of interest, and this is what happened to me time and again from my list of places I most liked to visit.
I did manage to visit Cristo Rey, which is a huge statue of Jesus, much like the big dude ( Christ the Redeemer ) in Rio de Janeiro, and similarly it is high on the mountain top with an excellent view of the city and the surrounding mountain ranges, plus it has the benefit of being bedecked in a whole carpet of lights that are switched on at night to make it visible 24/7.
It was also a good opportunity to see the difference in North Cali, which was big sky scrapers and commerical districts, and South Cali, which was all residential housing and looked very flat and uninteresting by comparison, with Cali's Large Bull Ring and Football Stadium set somwhere just outside of the centre.
After a few hours, a few soft drinks and yet another closed place, I suggested that we just head on back to my hostel as I was beginning to lose heart when he said that we had just one last place to visit that was central to where we were an it wouldn't take too long, so I agreed.
In the car we were just coming up to a nice statue sitting in an ideal slocation for a snap, and so natually I got my camera out and took a piccy, without noticing that there were cops doing "random" checks just next to it. As soon as they caught the flash I realised my error, as they then pulled us over and we were subjected to a random check, which included checking out the entire car, soft body search and investigation of our documents and passport.
Of course we didn't have anything for them to find, being the innocent tourist and local guide that we were, so eventually they let us go and with typical bad luck the place was also closed, so we barely got out of the car before heading off back to my hostel, the half day pseudo taxi / guide costing me 50,000 PES.
The heat during the middle of the day must have been in the early or mid 30's and so it was a welcome relief to get back to the hostel and crash out of a few hours with the rooms small fan washing waves of cool air over my back and face.
When I came out of my room a little later I was surprised to hear an English voice, though with a definite accent and I came face to face with a huge Danish Biker, who surprisingly enough was not a guest but the owner, having moved here a few months ago. It turned out that he was very much the seasoned biker traveller, and being as pale as me was still a gringo and had plenty of stories to tell to prove it.
It must have been his biker roots calling, as an hour later a Canadian couple and an American came in and were all talking bikes, good rides and leathers, and so all of a sudden I was back amoung English speaking people, though none from the UK, and we all shared a few stories and advice of past travels as we were all heading off to different parts of South America and for different reasons.
Much of the time we were politley grilling Mikkel, a former small Record Label Owner and many times biker, who had been to over 210 cities in 69 countries, mostly solo on his bike, but now he had reason to partly settle down due to recent marriage to his Columbian wife and their first baby who was born only yesterday.
After visting the city of Cali a couple of times he did some research and found that it was lacking in international hostels, mainly due to the poor image that Colombia is still suffering under, and so he saw his opportunity and after opening the first one a few months ago already has plans to open a second, a motorcycle rental company and a mini tour agency if things go well.
He also had some typical horror shories of being chased down by cops, run ins with drug dealers, episodes of spiked drinks and such that made me almost glad that nothing too scary has happened to me thus far on my journey, but the thing that caught my attention most was his local knowledge and understanding of the city.
Although the Cali cartel has been smashed and the whole place is cleaning up its act, there are still many places where shops and businesses are nothing more than public fronts for drug barons to launder their money, and even places like a local McDonalds franschise and petrol station had been corrupted and then bust by the local authorities. This at least partly explained why there were so many pretty shop assistants just sitting around doing nothing with hugely overpriced items in an otherwise empty shopping centre.
He also explained that due to the already numerous number of love motels and spa's in the city limites, he had been almost forced to adopt a super strict 'no locals friends of guests allowed in the rooms at any time for any reason' policy, as being a gringo he suspected that he would be targetted more than most, and in fact the local authorities had indeed raided his hostel ( without success of course ) about 6 times in the first few weeks of it opening just on the off chance that he was running something shady and thus give them the opportunity to shake him down or more simply just close him down, whichever they like doing most at the time.
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