☰Day Trips

Cali sits at the centre of the Cauca Valley, with easy access in every direction. The colonial town of Popayán — the White City — is three hours south by bus: perfectly preserved colonial architecture, cool mountain air and some of the best food in Colombia. Buga is 75 km north, a quiet pilgrimage town whose Basílica del Señor de los Milagros draws worshippers from across the country. Closer at hand, Palmira is twenty miles east; the Hacienda El Paraíso, setting of the nineteenth-century novel María, lies in the same direction. To the west the road climbs into the cloud forest of the Farallones de Cali national park before dropping to the Pacific port of Buenaventura.