With only half a day to Spend in Cali we had an early breakfast and looked at to do things nearby. Rated highly on Trip Advisor was 'Parque del Gato' so we headed there. We had a mixed first impression of the city - on the walk to the park we past small, brightly coloured houses, more developed buildings, run down areas and incredibly busy roads. Some of the smaller streets had brightly coloured graffiti and paintings which added to the character! The park was really bizarre, the name says it all really but we were intrigued to see what it was. It was in between a river and a busy road, and basically had loads of plastic models of cats painted in different colours and styles and a larger statue at the entrance. We had no idea of the significance and didn't spend long here, I had more fun photographing coloured birds hopping through the trees. There's also a Parque del Perro right near our hostel, we still aren't sure of the significance of cats and dogs!
The guy at the hostel alsosuggested visiting the stadium as Cali is this year's host of the World Games. We walked around the stadium and had a little look in a museum, there wasn't anything going on as the frisbee had just finished and the rugby about to start in a couple of days. We found a cafe opposite and watched some of the Games on TV instead, we needed a cold drink after walking around in the heat! Nathan's Spanish is improving, he has started greeting people in the street with 'Buenos Dias' and he was happy that he worked out a sign saying 'Asa2' meant Asados! We found a nice supermarket and bought salad for lunch for a change trying to be healthy.. only to get to the airport and tuck into a dunkin' donut! We were a bit keen arriving so had plenty of time to kill, the airports here seem to be very slow though so by the time we had queued to check in it was time to fly.
We had a bit of an interesting journey from the airport.. We had reserved a hostel near Tyrona Park which said it was 30 minutes from Santa Marta so we assumed it would be easy enough by bus or taxi, however the drivers didn't seem to know where it was. We got a bus from the airport to what we thought was the centre of Santa Marta, on reflection we may not have got off at the right stop! A taxi driver from there said he knew where the hostel was and would take us, however ended up getting very lost and had to ask several people for directions! We ended up couch surfing unintentionally as all the people he was asking said our hostel was too far away and he had driven in the wrong direction! This very nice lady who does couch surfing said we could stay for free and she would show is in the morning how to get a bus to Tyrona Park. There were two Argentinians staying there too, and they still had two free beds! They were all very welcoming and said we could shower and help ourselves to water.