Getting Completely Lost Near Cali at 5AM Was Actually the Best Thing That Happened
okay so i literally have no idea what time it is right now and my camera bag is somehow full of mud but i need to tell someone about this morning because i am physically incapable of keeping this to myself. i woke up at 4am because my hostel roommate was snoring like some kind of dying whale and i figured "why not just go walk around" because that's what you do when you're a freelance photographer and your sleep schedule is just a suggestion. the weather app on my phone said it was going to be around 11 degrees but with 96% humidity it felt like i was walking through soup. literally warm soup. the air was so thick i could taste it. i grabbed my camera, some random street food i'd bought earlier (still don't know what it was, tasted like a potato got into a fight with a corn tortilla), and just started walking toward whatever was out there.
Quick Answers
Q: Is this place worth visiting?
A: yeah but only if you like getting absolutely soaked by fog within ten minutes of leaving your accommodation. the light here at dawn is something else though, all moody and mysterious like a movie set.
Q: Is it expensive?
A: dirt cheap compared to bogota. i paid like 15 bucks for a decent hostel bed and the street food is like a dollar. my coffee was 80 cents. i'm not joking.
Q: Who would hate it here?
A: people who need things to be clean and organized and predictable. this place is chaos. also if you hate humidity you're going to have a really bad time.
Q: Best time to visit?
A: honestly early morning before the tourist buses show up. like 5am to 9am is the golden hour here in every sense. the fog clears around 10 and then it's just regular hot.
i ended up near this small town called palmira which is like 20 minutes from cali and honestly i didn't even plan to come here. i just got on a random bus and hoped for the best. a local woman told me "don't go to the main square, there's nothing there" so obviously i went to the main square immediately. she was right though. it was literally just a parking lot with some pigeons. but behind it i found this incredible street market that was setting up at like 5:30 in the morning and the light was hitting these piles of fruits and vegetables in a way that made me want to cry. i took like 200 photos of mangoes. i have a problem.
the humidity was so high my lens kept fogging up. i had to keep wiping it down with my shirt which is disgusting but that's the photographer life baby. at one point i was trying to take a picture of this old man selling flowers and my camera literally couldn't focus because there was so much moisture in the air. he laughed at me. i laughed too. we both just stood there laughing while my camera sat there being useless. he gave me a flower anyway. i still have it. it's probably dead now but i have it.
i met this guy who works as a photographer for a local newspaper and he told me that the best photos in the whole region come from this one viewpoint about an hour's walk up a mountain. he said "you have to go at dawn because after 8am there's always this weird haze" and honestly that tracks because by the time i started heading back the whole valley was starting to get that milky look. the air pressure was really high too (1017 hPa according to my phone's weather app which i was obsessively checking because i couldn't tell if it was going to rain or just stay weirdly damp). it didn't rain but it felt like it could. the whole time i was walking back i kept thinking about how this is exactly the kind of place that would show up in a horror movie. like some american college students would definitely get murdered here. but also the photos would be incredible so maybe it's worth it.
*the light here is unlike anywhere else i've ever been.* it's soft in a way that makes everything look like a memory even when it's happening right in front of you. i don't know how else to describe it except that i kept taking pictures of random walls and they looked like art. maybe that's just me being sleep deprived but i stand by it.
i found this tiny restaurant that was basically just someone's living room with some tables in it and i had the best breakfast of my entire trip. the woman cooking asked me where i was from and when i said california she got really excited because she'd never met anyone from california before. she made me this thing that was like eggs but also somehow corn and cheese and it was incredible. i tried to take a picture of it but she waved her hands at me and said "eat first, pictures later" so i did. best decision. sometimes you just have to put the camera down and eat the food. i know, i know, i'm a photographer and i should document everything, but some things are just better experienced directly. i think that's what this whole trip has been teaching me honestly.
i've been doing this for five years now and the thing nobody tells you about being a freelance photographer is that half the time you're not even taking photos. you're just waiting. you're sitting in some random place at some random hour hoping the light does something interesting. and most of the time it doesn't. but sometimes it does and that's why you keep coming back. this morning it did. multiple times. i got shots that i know are going to be good even though i haven't looked at them on a real computer yet. i can just tell. there's a feeling you get when you nail it. it's like a little dopamine hit right in the chest.
i'm writing this from a bus back to cali and my legs are absolutely killing me. i walked like 15 kilometers today. my feet are wet. my socks are a disaster. i have mud in places that mud should not be. i am so happy. i can't wait to do it again tomorrow. someone on the bus told me there's a waterfall about two hours from here that nobody knows about and honestly that sounds perfect. i'm going to wake up at 4am again. i'm going to be exhausted. i'm going to be gross. i'm going to take photos that may or may not turn out. and that's just how it goes.
if you're thinking about coming here, just know that the weather is going to be weird. it's going to feel like 10.5 degrees but also somehow humid in a way that doesn't make sense. bring a rain jacket even if it's not supposed to rain. bring good shoes. bring a camera or don't. honestly the best camera is the one you have with you and all that cliché stuff is true for a reason. the people here are incredibly nice in that specific latin american way where they'll help you even if you can't communicate well. i pointed at things a lot. i nodded a lot. it worked fine.
i looked up some stuff on tripadvisor after i got back to the hostel and honestly the reviews are mixed. some people love it, some people think it's boring. i think it depends on what you're looking for. if you want fancy restaurants and organized tours and all that stuff, go to medellín. if you want to get lost and find weird fruit markets at dawn and meet old men who give you flowers even when your camera is broken, stay here. i found a thread on reddit that said "palmira is the most underrated place in the whole valle del cauca region" and i agree. there's also a yelp page for the town but it's mostly in spanish and the ratings seem random so take that with a grain of salt.
the best thing about traveling alone as a photographer is that you can be as weird as you want. you can stop in the middle of the street to take a picture of a shadow. you can spend forty minutes photographing a fruit stand. you can wake up at 4am for no reason and walk around in the fog until your fingers go numb. nobody's going to judge you because you're alone and also because photographers are just allowed to be weird. it's part of the job description.
i'm going to go shower now. i think there's still mud in my ear. but i got the shot. multiple shots actually. and that's what matters. that's always what matters.
if you come here, look for the woman who sells the corn and egg thing near the main square. tell her the crazy photographer with the broken camera sent you. she'll know who you mean. probably.
"the fog here isn't weather, it's a mood" - some guy i met at a bus stop who turned out to be a poet apparently
anyway that's my morning. hope yours was good too. go take some pictures of something. anything. it doesn't matter what. just go do it.
links for the nerds:
- https://www.tripadvisor.com/travel-g294070-c30240-colombia.html (general valle del cauca stuff)
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ColombiaTravel/ (honestly the best resource for finding weird hidden spots)
- https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=restaurants&find_loc=palmira+colombia (hit or miss but sometimes you find gold)
- https://www.lonelyplanet.com/colombia/cali-and-valle-del-cauca (good overview if you need context)
- https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/palmira-colombia (for the weird stuff)
- https://www.colombia.travel/en (official tourism site, a bit corporate but useful for planning)
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