Flights to Cali

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Cali for Beginners

Park Route

Salsa Route

Caliwood: Cinema Route

Cali for Beginners

To visit the city of Salsa is to find dance, color and great food. Therefore, before taking a thematic route, here are five plans for those who visit the capital of Valle del Cauca for the first time:

Go to Delirio

A frenzied dance of never-ending rhythm and intensity, Delirio is one of the most recognized salsa shows in Colombia. The numbers back it up: during its first ten years, they made 350 performances in 19 countries for a total of 400,000 spectators.

Listen to rock at Martyn's

Founded in 1983 by John Martyn Smith, a Welsh tequila lover who has taught several generations of 'Caleños' the importance of the Beatles and the RollingStones, the place preserves the aesthetics of a British pub. It has never gone unnoticed: in 1992, David Gilmour, the guitarist of the British band Pink Floyd, visited the place after a concert at the Pascual Guerrero stadium.

Go to the Jairo Varela Museum

This museum was created to honor one of the great figures of salsa, founder and director of Grupo Niche, who is remembered for songs like Sin sentimiento, Busca por dentro, Gotas de lluvia, Una aventura or Cali pachanguero. Here, dozens of treasures of the world's leading salsa exponents, such as Celia Cruz and Oscar D'León, are displayed.

Walk along Bulevar del Río

This avenue is 780 square meters (8,390 square feet) wide and was inaugurated in 2013. It welcomes about 6,000 people every day. In 2014, during the XXIV Colombian Architecture Biennial, Bulevar del Río received an award from the Colombian Architect Association (Sociedad Colombiana de Arquitectos) for the best urban design in the country.

Park Route 

Mexican writer Elmer Mendoza once wrote: "Parks are the eyes with which big cities look at the world." If this is true, Cali, a city with 2,450,998 square meters (little under one square mile) of public parks is a great sentinel.

Parque de los poetas

A small square that pays tribute to great figures of Valle del Cauca’s literature, including Jorge Isaacs, Carlos Villafañe, Octavio Gamboa, Ricardo Nieto and Antonio Llanos: writers who marked the history of the region. Nearby you can enjoy a cup of coffee with a pandebono (a cheese-stuffed bun made with cornmeal and yuca starch) or a muffin at Panaletto Bakery.

El Gato del río and his girlfriends

On the banks of Cali River we can find the sculptures of a Cat and his girlfriends. Around 20 cats of intense colors and set in different positions have turned the place into an open-air museum. The cat is the work of Hernando Tejada, and his girlfriends were made by various sculptors such as Ómar Rayo, Diego Pombo, Ángela Villegas and Lorena Espitia.

Parque del Perro

In the center of the park we can see the statue of Teddy, a dog that was poisoned. According to the locals, their owners built the monument out of the love they felt for him. In its surroundings you can eat typical dishes from Cali at La Comitiva or try the Asian menu from Sushi Green.

Parque Panamericano

Also known as Parque de las Banderas, it is one of the best-known parks in Cali. On Sundays you can visit the fruit stalls and try a lulada (a drink made with lulo pulp, crushed ice and sugar), a cholado (fruit salad with shaved ice and condensed milk) or a champús (a corn-based drink with panela and fruits such as pineapple or lulo).

Ecoparque de las Garzas

This eco-park is located in the south of Cali, in an environmental corridor known as Bajo Pance. While walking or cycling, you can see birds such as kingfishers, woodpeckers, ducks and herons, which give the park its name. Bring bug repellent.

Salsa Route

The love story between Cali and salsa music started five decades ago when Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz played there for the first time. Though before it was shyly played in popular neighborhoods, after 1968 the salsa spirit took over the city.

Today, the mandatory pilgrimage sites for its fans are Sexta Avenida and Calle Quinta. Yet, they are not the only ones:

La Matraca

This club was a pioneer of its kind. People have been enjoying salsa and tango here for over 54 years. Its oldest clients go there every weekend with sequin dresses and dance shoes.

MalaMaña

What started as an abandoned basement, today is a nightclub. MalaMaña’s bet is simple: to make people dance 'salsa brava', that is, the one that is not played on the radio and whose tempo seems to 'break' the speed of sound. It is also an effort to revive the party scene in downtown Cali.

La Topa Tolondra

It started as a small house and today is one of the biggest nightclubs on Calle Quinta. Its dance floor is never empty, and couples go there to show their best moves. On Wednesdays the party is preceded by a cinema forum, and on Thursdays there are live music shows.

Punto Baré

This club is special for its live shows and its Big Band, which makes people dance their shoes off. The band is led by musician Jaime Henao, who has collaborated with artists such as Grupo Niche. The best day to visit is on Wednesday, when the biggest party of the week is held.

Tin Tin Deo

Its decoration, tables and essence are all inspired in Cali during the 70s. Its walls are filled with portraits of salsa legends such as Hector Lavoe, Cheo Feliciano and Celia Cruz; however, this club is also famous for its dancing, as some salsa schools frequently visit it to show their acrobatic dance steps.

With Avianca find out information about places, dace clubs, Cali nightlife and much more. 

Caliwood: Cinema Route

The first film that was ever made in Colombia, called María, was rolled in Cali in 1922. Since then, the city has witnessed the evolution of cinema in the country. Because of the experimentation of cinematographic genres and the large number of directors born here, the city was named “Caliwood”. These are some of its most representative stops:

Alberto Galindo Sports Unit

This complex was built in 1971 for the VI Pan American Games. Directors Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo filmed Oiga vea!, a documentary about Cali seen through the framework of this event. Today the film is a classic of national cinema.

Caliwood Museum

This museum is a monument to Cali’s cinematic myth and to Colombia’s cinematographic production. There you can find 200 old projectors, 100 vintage video cameras, 220 original movie posters and other relics of the industry. Its guided tours can be taken in Spanish or English.

Casa Merced

Located in front of a church with the same name, the house was the stage of the first part of the film Carne de tu carne (1983) by Cali director Carlos Mayolo. The film’s topics make it a rarity of national cinema and one of the clearest examples of what was called “tropical gothic”.

Jorge Isaacs Theater

Built 86 years ago, here is where the first color film made in Colombia was premiered. After being abandoned in the 1960s, in 1984 the theater was restored and declared a national monument for its French- inspired neoclassical architecture, its historical legacy and its 33-meter tall acoustic box, the second highest in Latin America, after the one at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

Cali's Railway Station

The first color film produced in Colombia was La gran obsesión: a psychological thriller about a woman who seeks to make her way in society. The train and this place (an old railway station) play an important role in the film, since those are the first things the protagonist sees when she arrives in the city and they represent both her great dream and the beginning of her misfortunes. The station became a national monument in 1994.

Restaurants

Typical dishes

A chef

A Recipe

Restaurants

La Comitiva in Cali

Specialty: Sea food / traditional Colombian food

A house built in the early twentieth century on the typical San Fernando Viejo neighborhood where you can find local flavors and ingredients of small producers from the Colombian Pacific region. As Juan Carlos Quintero, its executive chef, explains: "Our fish, squid and shellfish come from the town of Charambirá, in the department of Chocó, and they are caught with fishing hooks, not using aggressive methods that harm the environment."

Among the dishes you can find in the menu, the seafood casserole with Pacific stir-fry sauce (made with onion, tomatoes, peppers and coconut milk) and the atollado rice are highly recommended. "Despite serving traditional dishes, we see the Pacific as a global region, so we learn about the spices of Vietnam or Thailand and use them in our recipes," Quintero adds.

 Domingo Mercado de Vereda

Specialty: Healthy food

According to chef Catalina Valencia, the menu at Domingo does not only respond to the taste of its clients but also to the cycles imposed by nature. Her cuisine seeks to be environmentally responsible and uses every part of its ingredients. As a result, her dishes vary throughout the year: "If the earth is not providing something, then we do not use it and we adapt. There are farmers who bring us beans or sesame seeds every three, four months and we use them in our recipes," says Catalina.

One of the few yearlong dishes is the slow-cooked lamb, served in its juice in a raw lemon sauce fermented for one year with roasted sweet potato. The restaurant seeks to promote the figure of the culinary artisan: the one who sows, cares for, cultivates and sells his products with his hands, from the seed.

Typical dishes

Pandebono

Dough made with corn flour, yuca starch, cheese and egg. It can be easily found in the vast majority of bakeries in the city. In some cases, it is filled with bocadillo (guava paste).

Sancocho

Traditional soup from the Valle area, with plantain and a combination of chicken, beef or pork. In the south of the city, free-range chicken and herbs such as long coriander are preferred. You can also include potato.

Empanadas vallunas

Cornmeal dough stuffed with potato and shredded meat.

A chef

Vicky Acosta

Recognized in many occasions as the best chef in Cali (Platillos Voladores restaurant), Vicky Acosta is one of the people responsible for the consolidation of the gastronomic scene in 'Sultana del Valle' (one of the names with which people refer to Cali). Its culinary offer delves into the flavors of the Valle del Cauca region, but reinterprets them based on her experience as a chef and on a more global perspective on cooking.

A recipe

Aborrajados

The sweetness of the ripe plantain, combined with the cheese and bocadillo (guava paste), makes it a local delicacy. This iconic dish from Valle del Cauca is about a century old.

For 4 servings

Festival Petronio Álvarez

Although the Petronio is a festival that was originally conceived to promote Pacific music, nowadays it’s also one of the most important gastronomic events in Colombia, if you want to have a real and honest approach to all the flavors of the Afro cuisine of the country’s west and southwest. Get ready for a blast of flavors that will enchant you, in a space where more than 70 traditional cooks of the region converge.

Book your flight tickets with Avianca United States, and travel to Cali, The Petronio Álvarez festival await you!