As I have only got two full days in the city, and not having anything arranged for today meant that I was losing one of them as I speak, meant that I was keen to try and take the hostel up on their brochure offers of guides and sporting activities in the area.
Once I explained a bit about what I wanted, she asked that I come back after 7pm when the other receptionist would be there and he would be the main one to talk to about trips and tours.
Thus not wanting to waste the day I took off northward to where I had been told there was a large shopping mall that was modern, clean and might even have a cinema that showed films in their original language. I was not disappointed. The place was only ten minutes away and very easy to find from my hostel, it was clean, tidy, there were guards at all the entrances looking slightly bored and a few more wandering about the place making their presence seen but not felt by the shoppers.
A few fountains, some tasteful Christmas decorations and some very bizarre modern art statues all made the place feel very cosmopolitan and I spotted the cinema near the entrance almost before I even reached the front gates. As luck would have it the new James Bond movie was being shown at exactly the time I arrived and with just enough trailers for me to grab a soda and snickers before finding my seat in an almost empty theatre.
The film was great, just what you expect from a Bond film and you can tell that they are keeping with the darker mood of Casino Royale, much like the latest Batman films are more brooding and menacing that the light hearted, almost comedic, ones of the past.
After the film I took in the sights of the shopping mall, tried to buy a few movie and music DVD's but regrettably the selection was broad but few in numbers and in the end I just settled for sampling one of the nicest banana splits I have ever tasted, considering I was allowed to chose the ice cream and topping flavors ( yes in Spanish too, all thanks to the help of the labels above each ice cream tub ) and sat back to enjoy the last of the days sun.
One thing that did surprise me was that there was no travel agency or tour guide shop in the centre, as this would have been the ideal place to have one and would have meant that I could have booked up some trips here instead of hoping for some good news back at the hostel later tonight.
On my way back to my hostel I decided to take a detour along the more popular 6th avenue, as it was reputed to have many nice restaurants, bars and salsa halls, but I barely got 50 yards into it when I spotted a large supermarket and thought that this would be a great time and place to grab enough groceries to last me a few days, and once inside I soon realised that the choices here was staggering.
There was plenty of familiar western favourites to chose from as well as the local brands, and vegetables are vegetables the world over, so they were a doddle to purchase, and one nice feature was that there were loads of chairs and seats al around, especially at each till, so if you had to wait for the person in front to go through a trolley filled to capacity you could at least do it in some form of comfort.
Once I had my bag of goodies I retraced my steps, as I didn't want to get lost carrying a heavy bag of groceries, and quickly walked the 7 blocks back to my hostel, where I just had enough time to fix myself up a couple of sandwiches before the other receptionist arrives and I made good my earlier promise and once again attempted to book some tours for tomorrow.
The only problem was that despite their best efforts and the fact that many of the brochures were in English, the city guide this time of year was only in Spanish, unless I paid for two, one acting as a translator and all the amazing sporting activities mentioned were not actually in the city limits itself, but in the Lake Calima region, which is at least a two hour journey by bus north of Cali, and thus 4 hours of tomorrow would be used up travelling and it would leave me no time for the city tour, the museums or anything else.
Yet again I had fallen foul of not giving myself enough time to do all the things that I would have liked to do, but having hit the internet for at least two hours earlier in the day and last night I do not really blame myself for this one, as without booking an all inclusive holiday package there are precious few actual sites that let you book city tours that I could find in English, and a whole website in Spanish is hardly ideal for my purposes.
Thus it was that I asked the hostel staff to do their best to find things for me to do for the next two days and email it to me with prices, and then crossed my fingers that something good would present itself in the next forty eight hours.
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