As I was rumbling through South America, before Covid stopped all my plans I went to Cali, Colombia. What's so great about Cali, Colombia? Is it the best country to retire cheap? How is the food? What’s to do? What does it cost? Can you live here for $1000 a month?
- Cali’s the Salsa capital of the world. You can learn to dance everywhere. There’s more dance schools in Cali than Starbucks in Vancouver.
- Seriously. Rule #1 is go to Cali to learn how to dance.
- Rule #2. When I say dance I mean Salsa. There is a style of Calinese Salsa that is taught here that is world famous. For salsa fans, going to Cali, without learning this variation would be "muy loco"
- Gyms. Cali doesn’t have the free park gyms like Medellin. If they do, it’s very rare and I didn’t spot any. It does have the cheap iron gyms (72 000 COP) $35 a month, and the fancy ones (150000 COP) $70 CDN.
- Wifi: No problems, you can be a digital nomad here easy.
- Uber! It has Uber. So Yay! With my limited Spanish and bad map sense. being able to pre pick your map location on a map without having to talk to the driver is invaluable.
- Cost. It’s about the same cost of Medellin. You can exist on $1000 a month but it's a bit tight.
- One cool thing I did see that I don’t believe exists in Medellin is couriered Medical drugs. You can call a doctor on the phone, and then have them write a prescription, and get a motorbike to courier it over. It’s cheap too!
- Beautiful people. It's crazy how different people look here in Cali vs Medellin. You definitely don't want to get into an argument about which city has the most beautiful women. It's all in the eye of the beholder, so come by just to fall in love. Wink.
So, again. Go to Cali, if you LOVE Latin music. And want to dance Salsa Calena (a special style vs Salsa Cubana).
