Colombia Part 2 Cali, San Cipriano, Pasto and the border

Cali, salsa capital of the world! Also drug cartel cocaine capital of the world and previous kidnapping capital of the world (about 10 years ago). After taking a 20-hour bus ride a few days before, the 10-hour bus ride went so fast we hardly noticed it. Arrived in Cali late, at 10 pm. Did we go to sleep? Are you kidding? We jumped into the shower, got dressed, and took a cab to party central in downtown Cali. The entire street was hopping! There is one salsa night club after another, all the way down sixth street. They take salsa very seriously here. The clubs don´t charge a cover, so you can go from one to the other easily. We did some dancing, but honestly, even with all the salsa dancing I do, I sure don´t dance yet like they do here! Had fun though! The next few days we spent exploring Cali. We don´t go to museums per se, but the gold museum was beautiful! We checked out some more discos and discovered that not only do they just play salsa music (no meringue or reggaeton), but only couples go!!! So the dance scene was a little frustrating for us here.

We went to the bus terminal to try to get a bus to the border. We couldn´t! We are actually trapped in Cali! And this is why...it´s because of the bus system in this town. It´s ridiculous and frustrating and horrible (my opinion). Stacy and I waited in two different lines. There were several bus companies that have buses to the border. We had checked on some and they said there were no buses until January 5th! We couldn´t wait that long, so we were checking out some other companies. The line I was waiting in suddenly stopped moving when the one guy serving about 100 people abruptly got up and left for lunch at noon. Said he´d be back at 2! Everyone just stood there and said they couldn´t leave the line because they would lose their place. I asked many people if you can make a reservation over the phone. They told me that you can, but if there is someone at the window with cash in their hand, the company will sell your ticket! So it was better to wait and pay and have the ticket in your hand. After waiting in line for about two hours, Stacy and I suddenly found out that they were only selling tickets for that day! And we wanted to buy tickets for two days later! We left the bus terminal terribly frustrated and wondering why they did things that way. I guess Cali just didn´t want us to leave. We stayed two more days and that allowed us to visit the interesting town of San Cipriano.

As the bus pulled out of Cali, there were now military guards placed along the entire way to Cordoba. Sometimes one, sometimes many. While it may look like it´s dangerous, I believe that Colombia is trying hard to clean up its act and has used the army to keep the roads safer. The bus was never stopped, we just saw lots of uniforms carrying semiautomatic rifles. We got to Cordoba, it was raining a bit and we walked down the hill. The fun of this trip is that you go to San Cipriano by train. But not a regular train. Actually, there IS a regular train but you don´t take that one. On the same tracks, the natives have invented a new mode of transportation. It´s a few boards thrown together on metal wheels that fit the tracks and a motorcycle that is then attached to the boards and ¨drives¨the ramshackle vehicle down the tracks as fast as the motorcycle driver cares to go, which is sometimes very fast. The vehicle bumps, dips, knocks, makes scary noises as the wheels go around a curve and there is nothing really to hold on to. You are not strapped into the seat (if you can call three planks of board a seat) and the ¨seat¨ is not even attached to the body of the train. It´s free standing and free moving. All of this is on one track. What happens when trains are coming the other way, you ask? You hope that the two trains aren´t going so fast that they slam into each other. They both stop and by some unknown and impossible to figure out protocol one driver gets off, lifts the entire ¨train¨ (motorcycle and all) off the tracks so that the other ¨train¨can go by. On our way back, we had to stop five times. Twice our train was taken down and put back. The destination is San Cipriano which is a tiny town inside a forest reserve, which you wouldn´t really realize is a forest reserve because there are tons of restaurants, some hotels, and not a lot of garbage cans, if you get the picture. However, you arrive at a beautiful crystal clear river that has spots where you can swim. It goes up to about nine feet deep in some places. It was very nice, but we had forgotten our bathing suits. I went in the river with my clothes and Stacy sat on a rock in the river. It was all in all a great day. We got back to Cali around dinner time and had terrific skewers of chicken and chorizo and a special arepa, which was like a thick tortilla made of corn bread stuffed with cheese. Two good beers finished off the dinner.

The next day we did what everyone said we had to do if we wanted to leave Cali: go to the bus terminal at 4 am and buy the ticket when the windows opened. That´s what we did and we finally were on our way to the Ecuador border.

This time we took a cheaper bus and there was no bathroom, it was very small and we got bad seats (and not together). This was for another 10-hour bus ride, so we weren´t too happy. There were lots of little kids on the bus. Suddenly the driver asked for two volunteers to sit up front with him. I jumped up, yelled to Stacy and we got them! Over the next few hours we became friends with the bus driver and as we were driving along he told us of a strange festival in a town called Pasto, about two and a half hours BEFORE the border. This town has its Black and White festival once a year from January 4 – 8. It supposedly honors the ONE day a year when the white slave owners allowed their slaves to have a day off! On that day, the slave owners painted their faces black and the slaves painted their faces white to show that they were in accordance with the day. I guess it was supposed to be some kind of show of respect, but that´s hard to believe. Anyway, to honor this day, Pasto now puts on a 4-day festival and the day we were travelling it was in full force. The bus driver spoke so highly of the festival that we decided then and there to go to it and make our journey to the Ecuador border a day later. In fact, we decided that we would just stay up the rest of the day and night, not get a hotel, probably go out dancing and then just show up at the bus terminal at 4 am like we had done the night before and hop on a bus! Well, not everything is quite as we expected.

We got off in Pasto, did some Internet stuff and the man at the Internet place told us the parades and parties were just in the afternoon and now it was late and we had missed everything. We were so disappointed, but we´ve learned on the trip that not everything people tell us is true. So we decided to take the bus downtown and see what was going on anyway. Well the man was wrong and party central was going on exactly where we got off the bus. We saw everyone wearing lightweight ponchos, so we decided we should get them too so we would fit in. Most people were also carrying plastic cans of something and plastic bags of something else. Others had little bottles. As we got closer, someone came up from behind us and dumped white powder on our heads. The game was ON!!! The plastic cans were spray foam and the little bottles were different colors of paint! It was WHITE day at Pasto´s ¨Black and White¨festival! We heard a great live band so we went in that direction. When we reached the main plaza, there were thousands of people. They immediately started spraying us with foam so of course we had to defend ourselves and we bought our own cans. At first it seemed all in great fun, but it started to get a little crazy. People would spray your face, your hair, everywhere. We went to stand over by a bunch of police hoping to keep listening to the music without being sprayed when suddenly I got sprayed in the ear! We looked around and couldn´t figure out who did it so I could spray him or her back and found out it was one of the policemen who had a can of foam under his uniform coat. So I took my spray and got three of them. Like I said...all in fun. So I have the great experience of spraying three Colombian national police with spray foam and I´m living to tell the story. Didn´t go to jail and didn´t even get a reprimand. Imagine doing that in the U.S.! We wanted to sit down and get out of the way so we went to one of the outdoor places to get a beer. There were no seats, but a nice couple from Bogota (Carolina and Jaime) invited us to sit down with them and we spent the rest of the night with them. Everything was fine for a time, and then things got out of control. We stood up to hear the band and four teenage guys ganged up on me and sprayed me in the eyes, ears, nose and throat. I couldn´t breathe and I was down for the count...literally on the ground. Carolina acted quickly and got the medics who had a place set up right there for such occasions. Stacy, Jaime and the medics picked me up and dragged me gagging over to the temporary clinic where they gave me oxygen and made me relax (I was having a panic attack because I couldn´t breathe!). After that I was fine. We all looked horrible with paint, powder and foam all over us but I said it was time to go out dancing. We went to a nice place (don´t forget – we looked HORRIBLE- see the photos) where they were playing indigenous Andes music and we learned to do a new dance. After awhile our friends left and we made our way to the bus station. We had the great idea of staying up all night, remember? BAD IDEA! First, we were bedraggled and tired and the bus station was freezing! We had to take all of our warm clothes out of our suitcases (I had only one long sleeved shirt. Luckily Stacy was more prepared and gave me a turtleneck and gloves.) We toughed it out until we got our bus at 5:30 in the morning, but we were miserable. When we got to Ipiales, we wanted to see a special sanctuary that was built into the side of a gorge and so we contracted with a taxi driver to take us there and then to the border. The sanctuary was amazing and no one kicked us out for how we looked. We had to go to immigration on the Colombian side (one hour and five minute wait in line for no reason) to get stamped out, then we walked across the border into Ecuador and had to go to immigration (one hour and five minute wait in line for no reason) to get stamped in. But we finally said good-bye to Colombia and we´re in Ecuador!!!!!! Click here for photos of this part of our trip.