Music: Route with rhythm through the temples of reggaeton in Colombia
Literature. Journey to the origins of García Márquez in Colombia
With his salsa school
Swing Latino,
considered the best in the world, Colombian choreographer Luis Eduardo Hernández, known as
El Mulato,
has traveled 130 countries.
From the Maldives, where she arrived "after a 24-hour trip for a two-minute performance," to the United States, where her dancers escorted
Jennifer Lopez
to the latest edition of the Super Bowl.
The academy has been in Cali since 1991, the third city in Colombia in number of inhabitants (2.5 million) after Bogotá and Medellín and capital of the department of
Valle del Cauca
, in addition to salsa worldwide.
The figures support the latter: more than 5,000 dancers live in it, it has 127 schools, 115 orchestras,
140 bars, discos or danzódromos,
an International Festival with 12,000 spectators ... We must add a whole
industry around
that does not stop growing, since here are the production companies, the
recording studios,
the tailors who make the costumes for the performances, the instrument makers ... And everything since, in the 60s, the djs of the
Cali nightclubs
were given to speed up the revolutions per minute of the rhythms that came from
New York, Cuba and Puerto Rico,
going from 33 to 45.
The number one cabaret
The gesture made a
new type of salsa
emerge
,
faster and more difficult to dance, of course, which placed Cali on the international map of the genre.
Until today, when salsa temples such as
Delirio
(the Spanish filmmaker
Chus Gutiérrez
was inspired
for her film
Ciudad Delirio
in 2014) or
El Mulato Cabaret,
the successful theater that Hernández also directs
, continue to shine
.
Trumpet-shaped monument in Plaza Jairo Varela.
The musical route continues in the
Museum of Salsa,
the oldest and most complete in the world.
It has been located in the
Barrio Obrero
since 1968, the humble district where it all began.
There, Carlos Molina, son of the homonymous official photographer of stars like
Celia Cruz,
Tito Puente,
Héctor Lavoe or Rubén Blades
, rescues the history of the genre among images, instruments, costumes, contracts and letters.
"We exhibited 720 photos, but my father has 300,000 negatives, of which he has only developed 40,000," says Molina.
Two steps away is
El Chorrito Antillano
, a salsa bar where the old guard gives it their all.
The
square would be
missing
Jairo Varela
, composer of
Cali pachanguero, a
whole hymn, where a monument in the shape of a huge trumpet stands that pays tribute to him and to salsa in general, "along with graffiti that extol the identity of the city with slogans as
Cali is Cali and the rest is a hill,
"explains
Susanna Salo, a Finnish woman who ended up in the Latin country for the love of salsa
and who works as a tourist guide and dance teacher from her company Ritmos de Colombia.
The mythical salsa bar El Chorrillo Antillano.
Cali lives not only on salsa.
Its historic center also deserves a leisurely tour as it is one of the oldest cities not only in Colombial, but in all of
Latin America
(it was founded in 1436).
The tour starts precisely in what is considered the building with the longest standing,
the church of La Merced,
built in 1541 and to which today two museums join: the archaeological and the religious art.
Nearby is the Enrique Buenaventura Municipal Theater, one of the architectural (with its classicist Italian style) and cultural symbols of the city and where artists such as
Raphael or Alejandro Sanz
have performed
.
The cat of the River Boulevard
The itinerary continues in the National Palace, the House of the Memories of the Conflict and Reconciliation, the
Calima Gold Museum
(dedicated to pre-Hispanic civilizations) or the
Cultural Center of Cali,
a brick building of Mudejar inspiration in which they are celebrated the international Poetry and Film festivals.
The next stop is on
Calle de la Escopeta, a
focus of
street art
.
It is not clear if it is so named because of the fights that took place in it in colonial times or because its shape reminds (with enough imagination) of a shotgun.
Be that as it may, its graffiti, cafes and give life to this picturesque street that ends at the
Bulevar del Río.
Pedestrian-friendly, on weekends it is filled with open-air salsa, blues or jazz concerts, mimes, runners, cyclists and families on a walk.
There is no shortage of
street vendors who dispense
arepas and luladas,
guarapos, shampoos
,
raspados and other beverages with impossible names based on sugar cane.
You also have to look out at the impressive
La Ermita
church
, built
in neo-Gothic style.
La calle de la Escopeta, in the center of the city.
Another peculiarity of the boulevard (and all of Cali) is the three-ton bronze sculpture of a cat by
Hernando Tejada
, the most prolific pop artist in the country.
Not in vain, Cali is known as
the city of cats
.
The gigantic pussycat is accompanied by 15 other statues of kittens scattered throughout the boulevard.
"They were created by different sculptors and are the brides of the main cat," says Luz Marina Álvarez, founder of the ecotourism company
Destino Pacífico,
which tours both Cali and the Valle del Cauca coast.
San Antonio, the trendy neighborhood
It is time to discover the fashionable area, San Antonio, a traditional neighborhood of colonial houses that now concentrates a large part of the artistic and bohemian activity of the city through
graffiti
decorating the facades, galleries (E
l Palomar, La Manigua, La Maceta
. ..), antique shops, local firms and handicrafts (
Here we go, Sita Atahualpa, Pulgueros
...), boutique hotels (San Antonio), charming restaurants (
El Zaguán de San Antonio, Casa Alebrije
...) or old printing presses converted into art centers (La Linterna).
We must add the modern places where they organize storytelling, cultural workshops and film sessions seasoned with arepas (
Butterfly Language
), craft beers (
BBC
), natural juices (
Green Magic Land
) or, of course, Colombian coffee (
Macondo
).
Interior of the Ambos Mundos cafe in the San Antonio neighborhood.
One of those that concentrates all these activities is
Ambos Mundos
, a cafe-bookstore where works are sold and exchanged, while they organize literary meetings, exhibitions and classical rock concerts.
"We collaborate with the coffee growers of
Valle del Cauca,
who produce in a sustainable way, because our idea is to connect the peasant world with the cultural world through a
solidarity project.
Hence our name," says Juan Moncada, cultural manager of the place. decorated with images of great literature such as
Gabriel García Márquez or Virginia Woolf
and bustling typewriters.
We jump to the El Peñón neighborhood to enjoy a classic, the empanadas at the
Obelisco hotel
, with its views of the Cali River.
Next to it is the
La Tertulia Museum
, the most important in Cali, formerly called Modern Art.
It offers both photographic exhibitions on the terrorist conflict in the country and artistic laboratories,
design workshops,
seminars or independent film cycles in its
cinematheque
.
In addition, it has "a permanent collection of American artists mainly related to
graphic art
," says Natalia Vivas, Communications Coordinator.
Another museum not to be missed is that of Cinematography or
Caliwood
, since this is the Colombian city where the film industry develops.
Neither Bogotá nor Medellín.
The center has a collection of analog artifacts from the 19th to 1980s.
Fruit stall at Galería Alameda market.
We now enter a Latin market,
Galería Alameda
, where you can buy concoctions to promote virility in an esoteric store or XXL tropical fruits such as chontaduro, fleshy and shaped like a globe.
It also has an area with typical food stalls, from ceviches to arepas or
marranitas vallunas
, a green plantain
fritter
stuffed with
pork rinds
.
With a full stomach, we bid farewell to the city from the heights by climbing the
Cerro de los Cristales
, where the statue of
Christ the King is located
, 26 meters high and a reasonable resemblance to the redeemer of Rio de Janeiro.
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