Cali, Colombia

Only had a day in Cali and since it was the middle of the week, there wasn´t much going on. It was incredibly hot, the hottest weather I´ve had yet and much different from the cooler temps in the mountain cities I had been to earlier.

The English teacher that I met on the bus from Ipiales suggested that I check out the Universidad del Valle, one of the universities in Cali. The campus has many left leaning student activists and the campus is covered in grafiti. There was both written statements calling for students to rise up in protest against various government actions as well as murals. When I first entered the grounds to the university, the security guards stopped me and asked me lots of questions. They didn´t understand why a gringo would want to look around the university campus and assumed that I was up to no good. Eventually I convinced them to let me walk around but before I left they warned me to be very careful since there was a lot of anti-American sentiment on campus. While that may be true, I had a great time walking around the huge open campus and everyone I talked to there was very kind. It was really nice to get out of the bustle of Cali for a couple hours and just hang around with some students my age.

The quote in the upper part of the mural is from Che Guevara and roughly says: ¨The division of America into different nations is completely fictitious. We make up one mixed race from Mexcio to the Magellenic Straight.¨ The bottom part of the mural basically describes imperialism as death, misery and repression. It reminds me of the mural that is painted on the old American embassy in Tehran, Iran (http://secularcaniranik.blogs.com/scaniranic/images/us_embassy_wall_in_tehran_2.jpg).

Cali is a party town and on the weekends the salsotecas are packed solid with Caleños. Although it was mid-week, I still ventured out to a salsoteca and although I have no idea how to salsa dance, the Caleñas were very kind and tried to teach me. I don´t think I learned much, but it was a fun evening anyways.