Cali

Woke up around 10 today and immediately set about finding the cheapest places to stay in Cali. Colombia turns out to be really expensive compared with everywhere else we have been in South America so far, most dorm bed are over $10 and we simply couldn't afford to spend that kind of money, eventually after most of the morning was gone we managed to negotiate a deal with our current hostel, they offered us a 20% discount as we are staying for 3 weeks (they also have free amazing Colombian coffee!!). This brought the price down to just under $7 a night which is still more that we have been paying elsewhere but at least reasonable. After popping out to a cash machine we progressed to the next thing on our list; get some food for the time we are here. We had been informed that there was a supermarket 2 blocks away from the hostel so we walked this short distance to find a huge centre with almost everything you could think of for sale (except baked beans and proper cheese of course!!) We spent almost an hour looking round and marvelling equally at the interesting looking food and the astronomical prices. (it's more expensive than the UK) Finally we managed to come away with the basics necessary to feed ourselves for the 3 weeks costing us about $15. We walked back to the hostel, made ourselves a blackberry smoothie with some puree and milk which was amazing and went on the internet to find some salsa lessons, we have decided to spend 3 weeks here because we want to learn the fast and distinctive Cali style footwork which we have been so impressed with while in the UK. After contacting the couple of teachers we had been given details for we eventually decided on lessons with a lady named Jacqui and arranged a lesson for the next day. By now it was getting quite late so we spent the rest of the evening catching up on the blogs and chatting to a few people in the hostel while recovering from all the travelling on buses we have done over the last few days. We met two bikers and two travellers from Canada, all of whom seem to be going the opposite direction to us, this meant we could exchange info with everyone about things we liked or didn't like in the area we have already been and gain some useful info about where to go and what to avoid later in our travels.