Cali, Where Salsa Is King

I arrived in Cali, proclaimed "Salsa Capital", at about 2am and took a cab to a hostel that was mentioned in my guide book. It was full, and the lady I awoke at the ungodly hour was nice enough to point me in a direction towards another. Up the hill.

I found Iguana Hostel and crashed in a hot stuffy dorm. In the morning, I met a bunch of friendly fellow travelers in the common dining room and decided that despite landing the only room with a window too small to crawl through, I liked the place. It had a little balcony out the back, a tv, internet and best of all, a kitchen and laundry service.

I went for a walk exploring the town with Sonny, an archaeologist from Texas, and found that the city wasn't particularly exciting or pretty. It was actually confusing because it didn't have the typical layout of Latin American cities, of plazas and monuments. The whole place was more like a giant suburb where traffic honked incessantly and stalls were set up on every square centimetre of pavement.

Apparently, Cali is all about salsa, so I was keen to check out a salsa club. A friend of Sonny's, Urs , fancying himself a bit of a salsa man, heard from some locals that there was a club good for dancing on Monday nights, so we headed out. Early.

It was far too early and took nearly two hours for a decent number of people to slowly fill the dance floor. In the meantime, Urs and I had a few goes on the floor. He was a strong leader, so I let myself be twirled and flung about while trying to make sure my feet kept time and that I stepped out on the correct foot.

There was over a dozen of us from the hostel that night, though most didn't dance because they didn't know how to salsa. The biggest thing to do in Cali after partying in salsotecas is to take a few salsa classes. I hope they eventually did!