For the first time in about a month, I have a room alll to myself. AHHH--the simple pleasures in life :) I'm currently in Cali, Colombia, staying with a native Calieno, Juan, whose a friend of a friend (HI IRV!) He has a gorgeous apartment overlooking the city and offered to let me crash in one of his spare rooms. I, of course, took him up on his offer since I love staying with locals whenever i can. I wasn't actually planning on going as south as Cali when I initially planned my trip, but I started reading Que Viva la Musica! by Andres Caicdeo which is all about the debauchery in Cali and I heard about a cat park and a nearby town called San Cipriano so I changed my mind and hopped on a bus (ahh solo traveling.. so nice to be able to do what you want, when you want)

I had a bit of trouble getting from Salento to Cali... it was supposed to take around 3 hours but ended up taking about 8... I got stuck in Armenia (which is about 1 hour away from Salento) for about 2.5 hours waiting for the bus to fill upppp... this was despite the fact that the guy who sold me the bus ticket said that it would be leaving in 15 minutes... normally I wouldn't have cared, but I didn't have my phone and couldn't contact Juan to tell him I'd be late... to make things even more aggravating, the taxi driver in Cali got completely lost and dropped me off at the wrong apartment with my big ass bag and i hadn't peed or eaten since the morning so i was CRANKYYY and had a bad attitude about everything. HOWEVER becauseee the world is a good place (something I need to remind myself more often) and old couple who was driving into the wrong apartment I was standing in front of noticed the scowl on my face and while they couldn't really speak English and my Spanish is pretty terrible... I showed them the address and they put my stuff in their car and they drove me to the right place... and they also melted my heart and basically turned my shitty day into a good one. PEOPLE ARE WONDERFULLLLLLL AREN'T THEY!?!?

Juan has been an amazing host. Since we wanted to be up and early to get San Cipriano on Sunday, we had an easy night with dinner and drinks at a bar called Bourbon Street which made me laugh a little because he went to Tulane with our mutual friend :) I know it may be a little preposterous not to go to a salsa club when visiting Cali, but I am pretty salsaed outtt.. and SAN CIPRIANO WAS AMAZING ghdjkhgdjkfgfd

I cannot say enough good things about this place.. but I guess I've have to try. Here it goes:

The only connection to the town is by railroad. Due to the lack of trains, locals have set up their own ingenious transportation system with motorbike-propelled or human-powered vehicles that utilize the train tracks.... IT'S SOOOO AWESOME AND FUN TO RIDE
The river is super clear and refreshing after a humid hike... AND they have people in boats come right up to you and sell you beer
There are only 500 inhabitants (according to Wikipedia) and it's not an extremely touristy place (though I think that will change soon)

And if the reasons above don't convince you.. maybe the pics + video below will. and if not.. you're boring and you should probably never come back to this website (just sayin!)

Anywhose, if you're still reading this... It was a really fun trip with some coool people, including Juan's chinese tutor who's from Beijing and one of his best friends also named Juan. and FYI the Juan I was staying with can speak a total of 5 languages (he was having conversaions in English Spanish and Chinese during our trip to San Cipriano) and he biked across the US... he's basically my hero. After we got back from San Cipriano, we got some realllly yummy food (we were starving cus all we did was drink beers and forgot lunch OOPS) I got the Sancocho which is a stew filled with chicken, yuca, potatoes, rice, avocado.. all the best things in life. AND of course, I got some ice cream.

BASICALLY IT WAS THE BEST DAY EVER. ** Alas, I'm leaving Cali tomorrow and heading more south to visit Popayan and San Agustin before I head alll the way up north to San Gil and finally, Bogota to catch my flight to Madrid. It's crazy that my time in Colombia is almost over.. but I won't think about it now! SO MUCH TO DO STILLLL..

**please note i will probably use this line frequently with the utmost sincerity. there will be many best days everrr while I'm #livingthedrea