Cali

The waiter at the lunch place on Avenida Sexta set down my plate, heard the salsa change on the speaker, and danced the three steps back to the kitchen without spilling anything. Nobody looked up. In Cali this is just how the body moves to a song, the way a Glaswegian might tap a foot. Down at 1,000 metres in the Valle del Cauca, Cali runs hotter and lower than Bogotá or Medellín, and it has never had their polish or their tourist crowds. What it has instead is the densest salsa culture on the planet, an Afro-Colombian thread that runs through the food and the music, and a heat that most visitors arrive underestimating and leave defending.

When to go

The driest stretches are June to August and January to February: sunny days in the high twenties, cooler than the humidity suggests. March to May and September to November bring the heaviest afternoon rain, though it rarely lasts the day. The one date that overrides the weather is the Feria de Cali, 25 to 30 December, when the city gives itself over to salsa marathons, a horse parade, and street parties for the better part of a week. Rooms triple and book out months ahead. Come for it knowingly or avoid the dates entirely.

What it's actually like

Cali wears its heat openly. Daytime is slow and sweating: juice carts on the corners, men playing dominoes in the shade, the Río Cali running past the bronze Gato del Río that Hernando Tejada planted on the bank in 1996, now flanked by fifteen painted cats.

Come nightfall the city tightens around its music. This is not salsa as a tourist show but salsa as the default setting, danced fast and low to the floor in a regional style the locals will tell you is the only correct one. That same Afro-Colombian thread turns up on the plate, pulling Pacific-coast seafood and tropical fruit into the everyday, down to the aborrajado sold on every corner: a sweet plantain split, stuffed with cheese and fried. Turn up willing to be a beginner on the dance floor and to shrug off the rougher edges of a working city that has never tidied itself for visitors, and Cali opens.

The neighbourhood you want

Base yourself in San Antonio, the old hilltop quarter of pastel houses, café terraces and murals, walkable and the safest-feeling area after dark. Granada, ten minutes north, is the smarter dining-and-cocktails district, glossier and quieter at night. Both put you near the salsa clubs without depending on them for safety. Use registered taxis or apps at night rather than walking between barrios, and treat Juanchito, the out-of-town club strip, as a go-with-locals-only proposition.

Don't miss

A salsa night at Tin Tin Deo, the city's most storied club, open Friday to Sunday with a 5,000-peso door (around £1) and a floor where strangers partner strangers all night. If your visit lands on the last Friday of the month, book Delirio instead: a salsa-meets-circus spectacle under a big top with a live orchestra, tickets 115,000 to 240,000 pesos, and the single best argument for why this city calls itself the world capital of the dance. Either way, eat a cholado from a cart first, shaved ice drowned in tropical fruit and condensed milk, the proper fuel before the floor.