I've come to notice that people wait all week for Friday, months for a birthday, a year for Summer and a life for happiness..... Live in the now, eliminate the bad and surround yourself with the good! Wake up and be awesome!! – Kace Bates
Sunday, March 3, 2012 (DAY 364)
Arriving in Calí, Colombia at 1:30am, typically I try to avoid arriving in new towns or cities after dark, but this was unavoidable and for those that don’t know bus terminals late at night are some of the most dangerous and sketchy places because foreigners don’t only stand out, but become can prime targets. Knowing that for the sake of our safety we needed to find a taxi driver immediately and get away from this area. One of the few times that I’ve appreciated the barrage of taxi drivers attempting to entice you, rather aggressively, at the bottom of the steps from a bus, we chose a taxi driver that spoke a bit of Spanglish. Collecting our bags from the undercarriage of the bus, we didn’t realize it until we were following him to his car that he only had one arm but still carried our bags for us. I tried to take them back from him, but he insisted and this made us feel awful for not noticing earlier. Since it was more than a 30-meter walk to the car we decided to give him a tip of a few American dollars and I will never forget the smile on his face as he skipped away showing this to the other taxi drivers. This in fact was not our driver but just someone looking to assist with people’s bags for tips.
Arriving in Calí, Colombia at 1:30am, typically I try to avoid arriving in new towns or cities after dark, but this was unavoidable and for those that don’t know bus terminals late at night are some of the most dangerous and sketchy places because foreigners don’t only stand out, but become can prime targets. Knowing that for the sake of our safety we needed to find a taxi driver immediately and get away from this area. One of the few times that I’ve appreciated the barrage of taxi drivers attempting to entice you, rather aggressively, at the bottom of the steps from a bus, we chose a taxi driver that spoke a bit of Spanglish. Collecting our bags from the undercarriage of the bus, we didn’t realize it until we were following him to his car that he only had one arm but still carried our bags for us. I tried to take them back from him, but he insisted and this made us feel awful for not noticing earlier. Since it was more than a 30-meter walk to the car we decided to give him a tip of a few American dollars and I will never forget the smile on his face as he skipped away showing this to the other taxi drivers. This in fact was not our driver but just someone looking to assist with people’s bags for tips.
Since we were sleep-deprived and exhausted, we asked the driver to take us to a cheap hostel. By this he understood the Hard Rock Hotel, which is about as close to a genuine Hard Rock Hotel as gravy with fries is an American tradition. After inspecting the room and negotiating a cheaper price we lugged our bags into the small room. It was not until we took a closer look at that we noticed this was in fact a pay-by-the-hour no-tell motel. Without little options at 2am in a city that was formerly notorious for drug wars with the Medellin Cartel and already having paid, we set our bags down on anything we could find other than the floor. Two more surprises awaited us in this luxurious hotel; the first was the fact that there were windows viewing in to both the toilet and the shower, classy is all I can say, and the second surprise was the enormous mirror above the bed. Interestingly enough there was no mirror in the bathroom. I can only imagine the Trip Advisor ratings on such a fine establishment and I wonder how long it will take for the Hard Rock Hotel to file a lawsuit for using their name.
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