Cali, Colombia – April 13-16, 2011 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. I left Panama around noon on the 13th and flew to Cali, Colombia where I was met by someone from the hotel. She didn’t speak much English and I don’t speak much Spanish so it was a pretty quiet ride to the hotel. The trip took about 40 minutes and it seemed we were going in every direction. At times we were doing u-turns but that seems to be a common practice in Latin America. The streets are divided by boulevards and there are very few stop lights. If you want to get to something on the other side of the street or you want to turn left, you simply do a u-turn and then turn right. And in the case of Cali, you must do this while moving around non-vehicular traffic such as horse and carts which seem to be common. Anyway, I made it to the hotel and checked in. The room is very nice and the hotel has a restaurant and bar and pool so I will survive just fine. The pool and bar are on the 7th floor so the views are pretty good too. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. The first afternoon I went for a walk down the street to a mall three or four blocks away. It is quite large and has some very nice stores for clothing, shoes, cell phones, etc. There are also some small food kiosks for things like ice cream, which I of course had to try, and a food court. The top floor is a cinema with ten theatres and it looked just like any theatre you would find in Canada except perhaps even fancier. Four of the shows were in English with Spanish subtitles while the rest were all dubbed in Spanish. I checked just in case it rained continually while I was in town. The roof around the cinema is open so there was a lovely view of the city, which seems to stretch for a very long way, and the surrounding countryside and mountains all of which were very green. It was a cloudy day so the view was limited by the low clouds around the mountain tops. And when I say mountains I don’t mean high snow-capped mountains. These mountains are quite low and rounded and covered in vegetation. Some are inactive volcanoes but I don’t think they all are. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. I had dinner in the hotel restaurant that night and booked a city tour for the following day. I was the only one on the tour and my guide’s English was pretty good. He kept apologizing but I understood most of what he was telling me. We drove around in his car and saw the main sights of town. As he noted, it’s not really a tourist town so there isn’t a lot to see. Most of the sights are churches so if he has clients who don’t want to see churches he’s really lost as to where to take them. I personally like seeing churches so the itinerary was fine with me except we didn’t take time to go into any of them so I missed out on that opportunity. We visited La Merced which was the location of the first mass in the city to commemorate the founding of the city by the Spanish in 1536. The church is an all white structure which seems to be white wash or paint over a mix of bricks and stones, and I know from the guide that some of the bricks were adobe and thought to be original. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Santiago de Cali is the full name of the city and the population is over 2 million. Santiago is apparently the Spanish word for St. James (who knew?) and most believe Cail is short for the Calima Indians who lived in the area. Others believe Cali is an ancient Quechua word but I never heard the meaning for it. Anyway, Cali is the capital of the Valle de Cauca district and the third largest city in Colombia. It was founded in 1536 by the Spanish, specifically Sebastian de Belalcazar who first came to America with Columbus on his third voyage. He was also with Pizarro in the conquest of Peru but left him and went north looking for El Dorado, the city of gold. Along the way he founded Quito, Ecuador and other cities including Cali, which was once under the control of Quito. We went to see the statue of Belalcazar on the hillside overlooking the city. It is a beautiful view and has a park below. There was a wedding party there taking pictures at the time of our visit. Belalcazar in his statue is looking at the city but pointing behind toward the Pacific Ocean. I’m not sure whether he’s saying that’s where I came from or that’s where I’m going but it seems strange. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Until the end of the 18th century the area around Cali was mainly large cattle ranches and sugar cane plantations owned by the noble people and worked by African slaves. At the turn of the century the population of the city and surrounding area was just over 6,000 and over 1,000 of the inhabitants were slaves. By the 19th century there were 20,000 people in the city and today there are over 2 million so it really grew in the 20th century. The area is rich agriculturally and there was also gold to be mined in the hills. At one time there were farms with mango, maize, sugar cane, cattle, etc. Now almost everything is sugar cane because it is so easy to grow and harvest and little manpower is needed on the farms. Unfortunately the soil is becoming less productive because all they grow is the sugar cane. I can say that from the air as I flew in the area looked incredibly green and was divided into very large fields. There were no trees, just fields of green as far as you could see, and now I know it was all sugar cane. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… The actual first stop on the city tour was El Monumento Al Gato, which really is a monument to the cat. There is one large cat sculpture at the beginning of the park which runs along the river. This sculpture was commissioned and installed at some point. Soon after, other artists were designing their own cats and these have now been added. The first sculpture is unique but all the others are the same cat but decorated differently. One is gold and has a haughty superior attitude. Another is pink and looks like a femme fatale. Another is white with writing on it for Colombian liberty. A number of them were out for “repairs” so there were many blank spots. Not far from this park there was an anchor which was a monument to the sea. Despite not being right on the coast, the sea and shipping and fishing are still important to Cali. Then there was also a bird monument. I don’t remember the name of the bird but it was quite a large monument. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. We then went up to Cristo Rey. This is a statue of Christ at the top of a very high hill or mountain in the city. The statue itself is 31 meters high so only a bit smaller than the one in Rio. However, this one is not as much of a tourist attraction so there was literally no one else there. The views were stunning but, because of the weather and the haze in the air, visibility was a bit limited. I never thought to ask if this one was lit at night but I don’t remember seeing any floodlights around. From the top the guide pointed out all the major sports stadiums in Cali, which is apparently the sports capital of Colombia. On the hillside on the way down from the statue there was a red cliff that an artist was sculpting into a religious scene. The work was incredible so of course I had to stop and take a picture and make a small donation to the cause. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. We went to another church, whose name I forget, which is also on a hill. A very talented young man was there in front of the church with his jewelry trying to make a sale and he was quite entertaining. He was also wearing a unique hat made out of banana leaf fibres. It had a wide brim and then tapered into a long three-foot pointed top that bent in an angle and looked like a witches hat or something out of Harry Potter movies except it was brown not black. The church itself was white but had some beautiful old brick parts such as the main façade and small tower. I’m not sure if the church is still functioning as a church but a group of nuns lives in the back cloister area and they are still active. They are under a vow of silence so supposedly their church services are rather silent and might not be all that beneficial to a congregation. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. We also went to the San Francisco Plaza and Church. This church is totally of dark bricks and has no tower over the main sanctuary. At the other end of the complex there is a tower and it’s quite unique as it has four tiers and each tier is slightly different with different bricks and different designs. Apparently one of the works just decided it should be this way and the bosses agreed. The plaza is large but quite plain with a bricked area for gatherings but few trees, monuments or benches. And speaking of trees, we did go see an old ceiba tree. Supposedly it is one of the oldest trees in the area. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. The Municipal Theatre in Cali is a huge lovely building which is yellow in colour with white trim on its ornate windows, balconies, doors, archways, columns, statues and other beautiful decorations. To add to the “oldness” of the setting there are black ornate street lamps out front and on the roof and even hanging on the building itself. Again I would love to have gone inside but we did not stop. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Our only real stop was at the Museo del Oro Calima or the gold museum, which was across the street from the Municipal Theatre. Gold was plentiful in the area and this museum shows many artifacts from the native Indian tribes, most of it partially or totally made from gold. The pieces were very impressive. Some were small with intricate designs. Others were large pieces of solid gold with little decoration. People lived in this area more than 9,000 years ago and the museum was divided between the early settlements (first 7,500 years) and the more recent periods of the Ilama, Yotoco, Malagana and Sonson. The detail and craftsmanship improved over the years but it was all impressive – also impressive just because they still have some of it after so many years. Everything from jewelry, pottery and cutlery to figurines, masks and containers were on display. The museum is free. We probably only saw a small part of it and it would have been interesting to see the rest. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Some of the trees in Colombia are wide with treed boulevards and some are quite narrow. Many of the streets are lined with kiosks and street vendors. And of course at every street corner someone is selling something. The fruit stands were quite impressive and the fruit looked delicious. We went by the main market area and saw the fish market which is quite large. The fruit market and vegetable market and many others are all in the same area. One of the other interesting things around Cali is the bakeshops. They are full of brightly decorated cakes. In the one block between the hotel and the shopping mall there are five or six bakeshops and probably over 100 cakes. They are large and small, plain or very fancy, and in every colour imaginable: red, black, white, yellow, orange, blue, pink, green, etc. I asked one of the bellman at the hotel about them and he said cakes are very common in Cali and it wasn’t just for Easter. I’m sure some of them were for Easter given their colours but obviously they all weren’t. And Easter is still a week away! …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Cali definitely has some old beautiful buildings and a few newer buildings such as the Tower of Cali. Tourism has not yet become really important here but it probably will be in the future. The people seem very friendly but most do not speak English although a few are learning some words. I’m glad I came but I probably wouldn’t return for a few more years for another visit.