Somehow, I forgot to mention that the week before, my kizomba (and bachata) teacher rocked up to my lesson on Thursday, after a birthday party in the school the night before and announced after a few dances that he had been stabbed twice in the leg the night before. Apparently, two guys had tried to r9b him and when he had retaliated (keeping his phone and money), they had stabbed him. Kudos to him, he kept his stuff, but at what cost?! When I expressed concern at the state of his leg and his day jam packed of dance classes, he laughed and called me cute for being concerned! What is this Cali world?!
29/4/23
On Saturday, I had classes to catch up on from my chilled Monday. After class, I went to meet a salsa friend Juan for two rounds of coffee and some french toast, which was bloody delicious! Laura, Felipe and I met up afterwards and headed to Bailar en el Parque, a bachata dance night outside a museum. When we got there, it wasn’t on because of the Folklore Music Festival. We left after a song or two and headed to the boulevard beside the river Cali, where there were many people hanging out, there was the remains of a market from the day and a big stage with live music (all folk of course!). We got some bevs and hung out awhile, and more of the Pacific lot came by, too. When we got hungry, Laura and I said bye and headed back to get areas and watch a movie (a great Saturday night in).
30/4/23
A chilled Sunday was had, starting with coffee in bed and a group call with my road trip chicos, Fleur, Giorgia, and Alex. After the call, I headed out for the day with another salsero. We headed up into the hills on the edge of Cali and stopped at a cute place with a pool overlooking the whole of Cali. We had drinks, hung out, and then had lunch – I had ceviche, which was super delicious and then a little while later, we returned to Cali and I headed to the festival market to check it out in the day. I returned empty-handed and met Laura for an early evening wine sat out in the street in front of the bar, which felt very civilised until we were hassled too many times for money!! We got amazing arepas afterwards and I got a chocolate, banana and oat loaf cake too! 😋
1/5/23 – 4/5/23
Back to normal, but since it was our last week and we felt exhausted, we reduced our hours of Spanish down from 10 a week to 4. I still had my two hours of private classes, but I had also stopped the group classes because I wanted to really enjoy not only dance but also Cali in my final week. I ate cake, drank coffee and chilled in various places across San Antonio as much as I could.
Monday was a national holiday ‘worker’s day’ and there was some sort of friendly procession in the street for this which I watched from my dance class!! After a day of classes, I went for an inpromptu cocktail night with Laura and Luiz, our friend from SofarSounds. We watched the sunset and afterwards, I headed home, cooked pasta and binge watched ‘You’. I was asleep by midnight (super early by Caki standards) because I wanted to be fit for the next three nights out in a row at least (it ended up being five!!).
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I made it out of course, even making the salsa class in La Topa on Wednesday. I had challenged myself to dance in the circle at the end of the class, an opportunity to dance with the teacher of the class in front of a big group of other learners. Sadly, I got too scared and didn’t have a pal with me to push me to do it, so I guess I’ll have to come back to do it one day!! 😆😆
The nights out were fun, and each one felt like saying another goodbye to Cali, one step closer to leaving. It felt strange. I’ve never spent nearly two months in only one place before, not even close!!
5/5/23
Friday was my final dance class with Alex. How times flies! Laura and I had our final Spanish class with Felipe too and we headed out for cake afterwards in a place Felipe recommended. The cake was good, but sadly, they forgot my coffee order (maybe for the best, since I’m predominantly disappointed with coffee in Colombia!!). Afterwards, I headed back to the dance school for what was meant to be my final class with Victor, my bachata (and salsa) teacher. When I arrived, the streets were blocked for a carnival like procession for the folklore festival! The drums were hammering down the streets so loudly, we quickly gave up, grabbed beers, and headed down to join the other teachers and a few other students watching. It was fun! There were bands with saxophones and trumpets, guitars, and the same group from Hawaii that I had seen the week before with one ukulele, which admittedly got very lost in the hubbub of noise!! Afterwards, I went to shower before meeting Laura for a final (fancy) dinner before we left. We went to a cute place near Parque de los Perros, where the food was glorious and there was even a secret bar. It felt like Dead Canary back home in Cardiff, and I remembered my last time there with Georgia and the jokes waiter from Carmarthen!! It was fun! Afterwards, we got a taxi back to our neighbourhood. Sadly, a car drove into us when we were waiting at the traffic lights (we weren’t even the front car), and so we had to wait for the two drivers to assess damage and talk. The driver at fault was only 17! We drove around in convoy for a bit, looking for an ATM before we pulled over again, and the 17 year old got out the car again with his very fierce looking girlfriend. Our driver was very calm throughout the whole process and ended up accepting a total of 20000 COP (less than £4) for the scratches to his car. We were bemused. After all the drama, I ended up going to the street party late, around midnight! Luckily, I managed to find various people I knew there, from my dance school, my hostel, and the Pacific coast trip. Afterwards, I headed to Malamana, a salsa bar, for the final time.
6/5/23
Ahhhh! My final day! I had a chilled morning hanging out in the hostel before heading to my fave coffee and blogging spot. Afterwards, I went for lunch before my final rearranged dance class. I headed back to La Vaina for a quick turnaround before heading out again to meet Laura for sunset cocktails in our new favourite haunt, Cafeticon. Then we headed to Bailar en el Parque, a free dance class and social outside the museum and one of our favourite nights in the week!! Philly was there and then Felipe came, followed by (SURPRISE, SURPRISE!), Alex and his brother Tony!! It was so nice to see Alex again!! After the social, we went for arepas all together, and then Felipe headed home, and we headed out to a different dance bar recommended by Philly, who was already there. It was a cool place, and a great place to watch the dancing because there were many professional dancers there, as well as a few teachers. This made the actual dancing part pretty intimidating for me, though! We danced a bit, Lauda and I swapping between Alex and Tony and then I headed home to bed! We had booked a last-minute early morning flight to the coast(ish), so I figured a few hours of sleep wouldn’t hurt!!
wanderingwelshie2 travels 