My mates Blog - Must read

One of my best friends has just returned from a backpacking visit around South America. His blog is worth a read, as in my opinion it's pretty well written, and for him quite informative.

This diary entry is slightly scary though -

We waited until lunchtime to go to the airport to take our flight to Cali. We said see goodbye to the Swedes and Jon and took a taxi. The airport was the most security conscious airport I have seen. A check in the taxi on the way into the airport, a check once in the airport, a check to go into departures lounge, a check leaving the departures lounge to walk out to our plane and a final check before boarding.

An hour after taking off we landed in Cali and took a colectivo minibus to the bus terminal. From there we got a taxi to the iguana hostel. The journey there turned out to be a little hairy, as initially our taxi driver got a little confused and thought the hostel was in a part of town that really we had no business to go to. As he was driving us there he kept saying stuff like “Are you sure your hotel is here?” and “This is a really bad part of town”, maybe you should go somewhere else.”

We kept saying that this was the hostel we wanted, showed him a map of the city and the name and address of the hostel. He eventually pulled up to where he thought it was, and my god, this was indeed a scary neighbourhood.

Skag head, prostitute, pimp, drunk, naked man, naked woman, man doing shit in street – these were just some of the many things we saw as we pulled up. The taxi driver was right, this was definitely a bad area. The taxi driver to his credit kept saying that this wasn’t right, and he said wait here, and off he went to call the hostel to get the right address.

As we were waiting in the car we looked around and the sharks began to circle. One guy with no legs shuffled up to the door and tried to get in the car. Aaron basically yanked the door shut and locked it. If this was the area the hotel was in, we made the decision not to be staying there! The two of us white boys in this area with our big bags would just be asking to be robbed. We would have gone back to the bus station and gotten ourselves out of town!

Luckily the taxi driver came back after a couple of minutes and said that he was wrong, the hotel was not in this area at all, it was actually in a fairly decent, safe neighbourhood. 5 minutes later we pulled up at the correct place. Relieved, we checked in. It was astounding the difference in the two places - almost different worlds - yet just 5 minutes apart.

Although a better neighbourhood, there was still an undercurrent of something not quite right, and it was only a few hours later, after we had eaten, drank some rum and were heading out to a bar that we realised what it was. Standing on the street corner just outside our hostel were 4 prostitutes, touting for business. Only when we walked past them did it become apparent that they were in fact transvestite prostitutes. As we made the short walk to the bar district we passed prostitutes on every street corner, all of us unable to tell fake woman from real woman.
Cali is known as the Salsa capital of Colombia and is also famed for having the best looking women in Colombia, so it was with certain anticipation we went out to the bars. The only problem was none of us knew where we ere going apart from a Chilean guy named Bruno. He turned out to be a shite guide, as he took us to an Electronic music club, which was empty. After spending a while there it became apparent that it wasn’t going to fill up. By that time no-one wanted to leave and not feeling the love for either staying where I was, or heading to a different club by myself, I took a taxi back to the hostel.

Sounds abit like Glasgow on a Friday night