Cali to Pasto & Back

Still riding the happy feelings from the previous day, I set off for Cali early in the morning. For the first time in over a week, I ended up on an actual highway, giving up fun curves for passing lanes and high speed limits. After over a week in the mountains, I was now seeing the Cauca Valley spreading out on all sides, with tall trees giving way to sugarcane fields. As I got closer to Cali, I started seeing warning signs for "Cruce de Tren Caneros." As I was puzzling over what exactly that meant, a truck pulling four enormous trailers overflowing with sugarcane passed by in the other direction, and the mystery was solved. Sugarcane season appeared to be in full swing, with harvesters crisscrossing the fields, cane trains (hah) trunding along the highways, and the sometimes oppressively sweet smell of the crop being boiled down at the sugarcane mills interspersed between fields permeated the air.

One other thing I noticed as I got into Cali: it was hot. I'd grown used to pleasant days and cool nights in the mountains, and the 90+-degree temperatures and oppressive humidity in the Cauca Valley were a rude awakening, and I was glad to get to my hostel for the two days I'd be spending in Cali, and out of my riding gear. La Sucursal is located in one of the nicer neighborhoods on the north end of Cali, and leans heavily into the city's famous love of salsa dancing. When I arrived, there was a couple practicing steps in the main common area, salsa music was playing nearly the whole day, and the hostel offers free lessons every day for aspiring dancers. The friendly staff large murals throughout the hostel only helped the good vibes. After dropping my things and showering off, I found a parqueadero to park the Twin for the night, souring somewhat at the attendant's attempts to charge me double because my bike was larger than the others there, and returned to eat dinner, meet people, and partake of the free lessons.

As it was a Saturday night, nobody wanted to sit around all evening, so after dinner and a somewhat rushed salsa lesson, several of us headed out to Malamaña, one of the more popular salsa bars in Cali. After paying the cover and a security pat-down, we entered and found a packed sea of bodies swinging and spinning to upbeat salsa music. As tourists from Australia, Germany, and the USA, we were wildly out of our league; there were some seriously good dancers and couples there, but we each got in a few numbers, and had fun watching the activity either way. A live band went on around midnight, making an already exciting atmosphere even better, and overall it was a great introduction to Cali's famous salsa culture.

The next day, I took a walk from the hostel to explore a bit of Cali during the daytime, forgetting that it was Sunday and everything was closed. With the museums I'd had in mind off the list, I took a walk through the central park bordering the river, eventually ending up at the Gatos del Rio, a series of sculptures inspired by a giant cat sculpted by artist Hernando Tejada, and the Iglesia La Ermita, a small but very ornate Gothic-style church built from white stone. It wasn't the most productive outing, but I still enjoyed getting to see more of Cali than I had from the seat of my motorcycle, and even wandering around the neighborhoods and small parks, I could still see Colombia's general love of murals and colorful art.

I'd assumed earlier in the day that being a Sunday night, there wouldn't be quite as much going on, but the music in Cali never stops, and neither does the dancing. One of the guys I'd met at the hostel had heard about a cabaret-style salsa club called El Mulato, supposedly famous for its stage shows, and it didn't take much convincing to get myself and several others on board. Midnight would mark my 32nd birthday, and it certainly sounded better than lounging around at the hostel. As it turned out, I shared a birthday with another one of the hostel guests, so it took even less convincing to get us all out again. After some confusion with how exactly the admission worked, eight of us found a couple of tables at El Mulato, right next to the dance floor and stage. Watching the many local couples and dancing a few numbers ourselves was fun, but nothing compared to the stage shows. The dancers moved so fast it was hard to keep up, and the acrobatics they pulled off were spectacular. Between the dancing, the shows, the music, and a couple of shared bottles of local aguardiente liquor, it was a pretty excellent way to finish off year 32.

Monday morning, feeling surprisingly OK given the night I'd just had, I loaded back up and continued south, hoping to make it to Popayan by nightfall, and Pasto the next day. Despite running into a torrential downpour just outside of town, I made it to Popayan just fine, meeting Daniel, my Couchsurfing host for the night, at his family's home. Daniel had spent six months working in Oregon, spoke excellent English, and was an enthusiastic motorcyclist himself, so we had plenty to talk about and bond over. His family owned a chain of restaurants in Popayan, so dinner was taken care of as well. I was a little disappointed to only be staying one night, but I had a deadline to make in Ecuador...or so I thought.

Ngaire and I had long ago made plans to meet up in Quito on October 16th, a date I thought I could easily make when we'd first set it. Since then, however, things in Ecuador had rapidly taken a turn for the worst. On October 2nd, while I'd been making my way through Manizales, the Ecuadorian president had announced an abrupt end to 40 years of fuel subsidies in the country, increasing the price of gasoline by about 25%, nearly tripling the price of diesel, and sparking immediate, widespread protests throughout the country almost overnight. The indigenous communities in Ecuador, already one of the lowest-income groups in the country, would be hit particularly hard, and responded by blocking roads throughout the country, along with violent protests in many major cities. In a matter of days, Ecuador was effectively paralyzed; I'd been reading reports of road travelers stranded all across the country by impassable roadblocks and attacks on vehicles attempting to cross them; in addition, all roads leading into and out of the airport in Quito had been completely shut down. I carried onto Pasto, hoping against hope that things might let up in time for me to cross the border and for Ngaire's flight to make it, but if anything, the riots, protests, and road closures were only getting worse. I spent two days in Pasto, doing some hiking in the mountains surrounding the city and photographing a few of the beautiful churches, but with no changes apparent in Ecuador, it was obvious that even if I could get across the border, I wouldn't get anywhere close to Quito as things stood.

After a frantic evening and morning of consultation with Ngaire, and lots of battling with LATAM Airlines on her end, she was able to change her flight to Cali, and with less than a day's notice, I hopped on the bike and blitzed it back up north. The road between Cali to Pasto was utterly gorgeous, with the mountains and canyons surrounding Pasto being some of the most spectacular I'd seen all trip, and the weather was thankfully cooperating this time.

Just outside of Pasto, I ran into a group of motorcyclists on large adventure bikes not too dissimilar to mine, with a BMW GS, a couple of KLR650s, and another Honda touring bike in the mix, who turned out to be in the same situation as me; they'd been hoping to cross the border the previous night, but thwarted by the protests, had turned back towards Cali. I ended up joining them for almost the whole ride, noting how much quicker the trip went when following locals, and by that evening, had made it all the way back to Cali. The trip had taken yet another unexpected turn, and I had to scramble to make plans for the next five days in Cali, but all I cared about was that in less than a day, Ngaire and I would be reunited for the first time in months.