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Announcements
Posted by: perry on 03/02/2009 01:02 PM
Updated by: perry on 11/26/2009 03:14 AM
Expires: 01/01/2014 12:00 AM
Cali, The Salsa Capital
We had been looking forward to going to Cali for quite a few reasons. Austin had been dreaming about taking Salsa lessons in the salsa capital of the world and I was interested in checking out the city that everyone had been telling me about. We have been running out of time in Colombia (60 day visas for a large country like Colombia sucks), so we only had a few days that we could spend. Read more...
We left the farm in Palmira quite early and made the short trip to Cali in no time. When we got to the edge of town we have Diego (from Armenia) a call. He has some friends in Cali and helped us make quick friends in a new city. He gave us the number for Juan Paulo and we headed to Barrio Centenario to meet him. We thought we'd have a free place to stay with Diego's friend, but he ended up just bringing us to a hotel near his apartment. In the evening we met up with him again and went to a nearby park to hang out. Unfortunately it was raining, but fortunately he was able to help us pick up a bit of really good grass (called creepy). It's actually the best grass I've had since leaving Europe. So we hung out at the park (it's really more like a plaza), got really stoned, then walked back in the rain to the hotel.
The next day we went out looking at bicycle stereo options in the city. Austin didn't find anything that he really liked, so the search goes on. But most importantly, Austin came to Cali with one thing on his mind. Learning salsa. So we split up and I went into the center of the city to see what I could do for Austin and his dream of a bike stereo. After hours and hours I managed to pick up a Li-ion battery from an old laptop. It's 14.8V and 6450mAh, which is a lot of energy which he can use to power his ipod and an amp. I went back to the hotel after this great big achievement and got stoned. I wanted to go out and do something but there was a Manu Chau concert on TV so I just kept getting stoned instead. By the way, it's really nice to have good quality weed again.
The entire next day I spent in the center again. The next part of the bike stereo project, now that he's got a battery, was to be able to charge it. Well, it took a bit of research on the net to find out how to charge a li-ion battery. But the voltage and amp requirements for charging the battery were pretty easy to figure out. After wandering around and checking out all the shops I managed to get the required power supply (16.4V at 3225mA). But it's not as easy as that, there needs to be some logic in the charging circuit to make sure the batteries don't overcharge and explode. So from what I found on the net is that basically the battery will rise in voltage until the 16.4 volts charging the battery goes stable. After that, the current (amps) will slowly lower as the battery takes more charge. When the difference is 100mA, then the charge is done. I explained this to a few people in the electronics shops, but since it was Saturday, they were really all too busy to help me or else they refused to try to understand my broken and basic Spanish (by the way, it's surprisingly really easy to explain technical stuff in Spanish). I came back to the hotel frustrated and then found out that Austin hadn't done much more than practice a few minutes of Salsa in the last two days which frustrated me a bit more.
In the evening we went to meet up with Juan Paulo again. We went to a hillside park in the city and hung out. As the night came, we got hungry and went out in search of pizza. Well, we found the best pizza in ages. It was a quatro fromagio with garlic, spinach, and mushrooms. Juan Paulo ate with us but when the check came, he didn't have any money. I ended up having to foot his part of the bill (about $10). He promised to pay me back the next day. He never did.
So, Sunday, like everywhere else in the world, was BORING!!! I did nothing.
But on Monday I went on the net for a few hours and did a bunch more of nothing. In the afternoon I planned on going to a juggling store that a friend recommended so I could pick up a contact ball. But after using the net, we just hung out at the hotel and got stoned again. Then in the evening we met up with Juan Paulo again at the park. I got started talking with a group of people and there was one really annoying girl there that would not listen to anything that I said. Actually it's been quite a problem lately. More on that later though. So we were talking for quite a while and I think I managed to piss off that annoying girl enough to go home happy.
Austin never even went LOOKING for a Salsa lesson the whole time we were in Cali beyond the little bit of practice he had with some others staying in the hotel.
The next morning Juan Paulo met us to see us off. He also gave us each a t-shirt as a gift. But he didn't have the money to pay me back, which annoyed me. But anyhow, we headed out of town and cycled along the flat plains south of Cali until the hills started. We climbed two of them then stuck out our thumbs to catch a lift (we figured that we should really get a move on towards Pasto so we could spend a few days there checking it out). We ended up at a small village called Tunia. This place was really great. We went to the town square and the locals showed us the way to the local swimming hole (a pool built into a river). The owners were really happy to have us stay in their back yard. They even took us on a walking tour of the village and talked with us for a few hours. Austin got started telling lies which grew and grew and eventually turned me into a raging drunk that can't survive without having beer in my veins. It was funny.
The next morning we were going to leave early. But Austin took a look at his bike and noticed how bald his back tire was getting. So he went to work rotating the front and back tires. It took hours.
We cycled to the next town to use the net for a few minutes so Austin to ask my dad to order him a replacement tire and nothing else. He took half an hour. I'm tired of waiting for him. Anyhow, we cycled back to the highway and got a small lunch before heading downhill (and fast). But it started raining so we decided to hitch again and managed to get a ride to the edge of Popayán. We cycled into the center and I talked down the price of the hotel for the night. I went on a walk around town on my own. It's a nice old colonial town with white buildings and some of them had statues on top. Nice place. I also found chocolate cake, tasted the local street arepa, and had grilled corn off the street too.
In the morning we went to a bike shop to get some stuff done. Austin has fallen so many times that he actually destroyed the brake cable adjusters on the brake handles. He got new ones, and they were free. I had my pedals serviced and lubed for the first time ever. The mechanic said they were horribly dirty. I also got new tension screws for my front and back brakes (the screws which adjust the spring tension on the brakes themselves. Mine were rusty and the heads were getting stripped). The service to my pedals cost me $2.
We headed out of town, and decided to hitch without even really cycling much. We got a ride, a long long ride for 6 hours which took us past kilometers and kilometers of shit road. Our bikes were strapped to the back of a car transporter and each of us were in the passenger seat of different trucks. It was a nice and beautiful ride but with every pothole my mind instantly went to the condition of my bike hanging onto the back of the truck. We took a dinner break about 30 minutes out from Pasto (the truckers bought us dinner) then they dropped us off at a gas station outside of the city where we camped for the night with out hammocks tied to trailers in the parking lot. It was cold (high altitude cold, the kind with lots of humidity) but we smoked and slept just fine.
In the morning we bombed the hill to Pasto with a volcano in our view the whole time. By catching the ride the previous day we are now able to check out Pasto for a short time, which is where we are now. So I'll write about that later.
A few things have been pissing me off lately. Mostly it's when people just won't listen to me. For example, I'm the one renting a room in the hotel. I ask a question and the manager doesn't answer and just says how nice the hotel is. FUCK. I'm asking him about completely other stuff and the asshole just won't listen. Juan Paulo did this a lot to me too. The guy speaks English great but no matter which language I was talking in he just wouldn't listen to me. It happened a lot while I was in Cali. At the hotel I ended up just saying "hey, listen to me" and I just walked off and outside to cool down. Other times we'll meet someone who speaks 6 words of English and refuses to communicate with us in Spanish. I'm not sure if that pisses me off more or not. It ends up being quite pointless to talk with the person really quickly and I just end up leaving or ignoring them.
But I guess what's really been getting to me, because it happens the most often, is waiting for Austin. He reads the stories I write. I tell him in person. I try my best to be patient. But when half a day goes by while he packs his bike has gotten OLD. What I've been doing lately is to ask him to tell me when he's got just five minutes left. That way I don't have to sit there in my bike shorts for hours. When he says that he's got just five minutes, I start to pack. I still end up having to wait for half an hour. It's the same when we go to a net cafe and he says he'll be just a few minutes. I've sat outside the internet cafe watching the bikes for over an hour when he promises to be quick. Or when we go to a grocery store. If he runs in, it'll take half an hour to pick up three veggies and a piece of cheese. And when it comes time to pay it takes him forever to get his cash out of his wallet. And all the while I just wait.
I must say that it really annoyed me that I spent two full days trying to do shit for Austin's bike stereo project while he was supposed to be learning Salsa and he just ended up doing nothing. If it were up to me we would have spent less time in Cali and more time in the parks around Cali. But he was dreaming of learning Salsa here in Cali and he didn't do it. We were right around the corner from various salsa clubs and he never even went to dance.
We are in Pasto now. It's the last big town before the border and out last stop in Colombia. Ipiales is just a day or two cycling away and we'll be at the border town. We have to leave the country by March 6th, it shouldn't be a problem, and if we need to, we'll just hitch. Then we'll be in Ecuador. I'm really looking forward to Ecuador. I'll be meeting my parents there. Also Ecuador is a smaller country and we'll have 90 day visas. Se we won't be in such a hurry and we'll get to know more of the country.
Peace,
Perry
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