Today was our first full day in Cali and we took full advantage with 2 different walking tours. The one in the morning was about the history of Salsa (the music and dance) in the city. We walked around parts of the city center, saw some murals that represented important figures in the history of the city, and visited a museum honoring Jairo Varela and his Grupo Niche (a major playor in establishing colombian style salsa), who wrote Cali’s unofficial anthem, called Cali Pachanguero. The horn type art in the picture actually spells out Niche, and each little horn at the bottom had music playing inside of it. We also learned about Cali’s most popular saying, “Cali es Cali y lo demas es lomo,” which basically says, Cali is Cali, and the rest of Colombia is mountains.

We took a break midday before the afternoon tour which was much more geared towards the historical aspects of the city. We also got to see the famous cat statue(s) that have been gifted to the city by various sculptors.

After our tour we headed to a group salsa lesson at a local dance school which was fun. We had dinner after this, then practiced some of our newly learned salsa moves at a local club called La Topa Tolondra. Unfortunately we didn’t get pictures of any of this so you’ll just have to use your imagination!