Millions upon millions greet a traveler coming into Cali from Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport. Millions and millions of sugar cane stalks.
Adela, my fiancée and I passed this way to visit the third-largest city of Colombia, the sweet spot for the national sugar industry. Our 45-minute drive crossed vast sugar cane plantations stretching to every horizon, vistas of shaggy green broken only by an occasional sugar processing plant.
As it turns out, sugar is not the only sweet thing in Cali. Once notorious as the ultra-violent haven of drug cartels, the city of 2 million today entertains visitors with an easy, unshowy grace where good luck waits to happen.
Here’s how it happened to us.
We arrived at our hotel about noon, an inexpensive Hampton Inn with a view of Río Cali, splashing happily through the heart of the city (past a famous cat sculpture and cat theme park). Hungry, we set off on foot following the river. In four or five blocks, we came to El Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia and decided to stick our heads in.
I’m curious to see museums and churches everywhere we go. I’ve found these two institutions often hold surprises—or shocks—with great value to a questing writer. I had no clue in Siena, Italy, years ago, for example, that I’d stroll into the Basilica of San Dominico and come face-to-hideous-face with the severed head of St. Catherine. Or that a cathedral in Chiquinquirá, here in Colombia, would display the most beautiful carved-and-plaster effigies of the holy family and saints that I’ve ever laid eyes on, including the ones in countless European and North American churches.
The museum sits on the edge of the fashionable El Peñon section of the city. The neighborhood holds antique shops, boutiques, and restaurants. As it happened for Adela and me, the museum delayed those discoveries. After admiring huge trees and a thick, frog-loud garden outside several museum buildings, we noticed young folks hanging out. Maybe a film class? Maybe young artists practicing their sketches?
It seemed like a place with life. And with life, maybe food.
We found a museum café. And we would basically remain there the rest of our entire first day in Cali. We ordered salads and sandwiches, which came fresh and with the sort of service that we frankly don’t get often in Colombia. The country has some catching up to do to reach the customer service levels one simply takes for granted many places in the United States, and even more places in Europe.
The maestro of the customer experience turned out to be José Manuel, the museum store manager.
You meet this kind of professional in Europe: The charming, attentive, selfless-seeming staffer who makes a career of helping others feel completely comfortable with an experience. These service people are proud of, not demeaned by, the talent he or she has cultivated for making others fall in love with a restaurant, a hotel, a taxi cab, a shoe shop … or, in our case, a museum store.