City Tour and Museums

City Tour and Museums


So here is what’s happening in Cali. On Tuesday we got to see more of Cali from the Mountain highs. Enrique has a driver that took us up to the Mountain top that is the location of the statue of Cristo Rey. The statue was first built to celebrate 50 years of peace in Cali during the early part of the 1900’s and has since been rededicated once. From the location of their protector, Christ the King, you can look down over all of Cali. The population of Cali is about 2.5 million and that is all in once city. There are no suburbs here. The road leading up to the statue is typical of the winding up a mountain side, except well it was a narrow blacktop with zero visibility. We did get to see the results of a motorcycle crash on our way up. Again houses, buildings and schools were built into whatever space existed on the mountain side. We saw some neat sculptures that were built by a Colombian artist into the soft stone. The sculpture is Indigenous in style of faces and animals.
Once down from the mountain top we went to a park there and a church in it that was built in the 1700’s. We were permitted in once we knocked on the door and a resident nun let us in. There are still worship services there. The kids were excited when they saw and ice cream truck pull up, but they were only there to deliver to A LOT of ice cream to the nuns. I guess if I couldn’t marry I would eat a lot of ice cream too. Maybe it was for an ice cream social.
We continued our descent and went to a Plaza with a statue of Simeon Bolivar. The Statue is photographed, but there is much to learn just by watching people, traffic, street vendors… It is a busy plaza with all types of people. Many students, business people, young people distributing information on Cali, disabled laying on mats hoping for gifts of money, vendors selling garlic to juices, fruits and snacks. The business men sat on benches and a homeless man slept behind the bench. The social system is different with much less or no assistance available from the government for the disabled. Our interpreter said they are taken care of by their families.
That was our final stop for the day as we had one daughter with a headache and a son with a stomach ache. He has not been prone to car sickness, but if you ever you are going to experience it, I think the mountain roads, followed by city traffic without much regulation will cause it.