On my first look around Cali, the hot, sticky city of about 2.25 million in Colombia’s southwest, it didn’t strike me as my favourite place in the country. Or even my fifteenth favourite place in the country. The capital of Valle del Cauca department didn’t have Bogota’s cosmopolitan capital vibe or Medellín’s quirky, can-do personality. Cali’s downtown historic district, a centre of straight nightlife, was small and, on its edges, felt unsafe, while the riverside park that defines the downtown wasn’t nearly as gentrified as it was trying to be.
But then I visited some of Cali’s saunas. My first stop, Phisicus 21 Sauna (Ave. 3 Nte. #13-19, Cali, Valle del Cauca), was gauchely decorated, but that’s not why it’s worth writing about. There was a private apartment—living room, kitchen, the works—inside the main cruising area, the front door opening once in a while to reveal people cooking meals and otherwise going about their lives inside the bathhouse. In one of Phisicus’s darkrooms, there was a wall of prison-style bars, behind which stood fully dressed guys I hadn’t noticed wandering around. Out of curiosity, I tried, fumbling up and down darkened stairs and hallways, to get to the other side of the bars, but couldn’t. It was only when I left Phisicus, did I realize that the “other side” was a straight sports bar that shared a common wall with the sauna—the wall of bars was where the patrons of each establishment could mingle. Very, very clever.
I checked out some other spots. From the topmost floor of the multi-level Metropolis Club de Hombres, I could see a pool I hadn’t noticed winding my way around the club. I tried to get to it. But I couldn’t because, as it turns out, the pool belonged to the straight swingers’ club next door, where straight people had sex by the pool in full view of the gay sauna patrons. At the Metropolis’s Sunday drag show, the butchest guys were persuaded to parade around the party room in pumps to win prizes, something I’d never seen in any other sauna, ever. Over at the ginormous Cali Club, there weren’t such eccentricities, but along with cubicles, gloryholes and a sauna, there was a discotheque with a capacity of 200. It looked like a wedding hall.
With few attractions I was excited about seeing in Cali, I realized that the most fun I could have in the city was at these saunas. And not just for the sex. Guys in these venues were as interested in chatting, drinking and dancing as getting laid. They were dance clubs, gentlemen’s social clubs and sex clubs all rolled into one piece of real estate.
“There’s sex, but there’s also the party. You can dance, you can drink a lot. It’s very free, like heaven for the gay community,” says a sauna patron I’ll call Andres to protect his privacy. We met in a sauna in Medellín a few years ago and have kept in touch.
As the number of bathhouses for gay and bi men seems to be declining in many cities around the world (sex-obsessed Berlin is down to one), the industry seems relatively strong in Colombia. It’s not just quantity, but quality. There are historic and cultural reasons for it. Gay saunas provide safe spots for hooking up in a country where, even as crime has declined since the dark days of the 1990s drug wars, people can still be nervous of strangers. Saunas are safer than park cruising or taking someone you just met home. They also provide a handy escape in a society where many adult men who have sex with men might live with their families—either their parents or perhaps with their opposite-sex spouse; saunas can be visited, say, on the way home from work. In fact, most saunas in Colombia are not open 24 hours, but between roughly 2 p.m. and roughly 10 p.m.—hours when a busy fellow might reasonably be able to claim he had to run an unexpected errand or got stuck in traffic.
Like other Latin American countries, Colombia has any number of “love motels” that rent rooms by the hour, with staff at many of them (but not all) paying little attention to whether guests are straight married people taking a break from the kids or gay guys hosting a sex party they’ve advertised on local hookup sites. Impersonal spaces where people can shut the door behind them will always be in demand. But Colombian saunas—or, more broadly, the entrepreneurs behind various kinds of male-oriented sex spaces—have gotten smart at helping turn hooking up into a social, or least an entertaining, experience. Rather than a lonely exercise in walking up and down darkened hallways looking for Mr. Perfect, they’re creating the conditions of a party.
Planning a recent trip to Bogotá, it was hard not to notice, while cruising hookup sites and the sexy side of Twitter, an explosion of spaces dedicated to hosting men having sex with men. I knew there was huge gay scene to check out. But when I booked a couple of nights at Strodinn, in the city’s gay village in the Chapinero neighbourhood, I hadn’t seen it listed anywhere as a club, sauna, bar or whathaveyou and assumed it was merely a gay-oriented guesthouse. Only when checking in did I realize that my guesthouse room was only accessible by walking through a locker room, then a nightclub with a Jacuzzi in the middle of it and then a courtyard, where men in towels smoked and drank beer. Every time I went out for a bite or to run an errand, my exit and return were sexual adventures. Though Bogotá guys are reserved by Latin American standards, the clientele of Strodinn was not. This was as true at 7 a.m. (it’s 24 hours on weekends) as it was at 11 p.m.
Bogotá, a city of more than seven million, has about 15 saunas, not including the many “video gay” operations that function, in practice, as bathhouses. A new sauna, Baco Club Sauna (Calle 73 # 22-42), opened last year in a residential neighbourhood that’s about a half-hour walk from Chapinero. The club also hosts occasional all-inclusive party weekends in a nearby resort town. Across from Theatron, probably the world’s biggest gay club, the Groseros party also launched last year, hosting regular sex parties at Barra Club 58, which rents itself out as a venue for sexual adventurers of all orientations.
Exploiting the power of Whatsapp and other social media to keep patrons in the loop, business owners seem to be finding it easier to set up shop in unexpected places. Getting Whatsapp bulletins can make you feel part of an in-crowd. Angel’s Naked Party, also in a not-exactly-central Bogotá neighbourhood, is so popular and so good at promoting itself that it publishes a weekly schedule of events that include weekday afternoon naked-yoga sessions. Angel himself will start the party by passing out cannabis cookies and complimenting attendees on their jockstraps. Sex-party rivals like KTrines Party 21 has stolen some of Angel’s promotional formulas, though no one has yet to rival the crowds Angel draws.
Medellín, my favourite city in Colombia and one of my favourite in the world, used to have a very high number of saunas (probably more than a dozen) for its population of about 2.6-million people. But the pandemic claimed several of them including the long-standing favourite Club Tobi, which had a well-equipped gym and pool, as well as a steam room that was often so crowded it was hard (though fun) to squeeze into. But some of the remaining players have upped their game. Upscale Sauna Club 55 recently installed not one, but two hot tubs, while CRUISING fusión opened an indoor swimming pool and a new bar area. They remain large, busy places where socializing often precedes sex; both clubs have bar areas where patrons might sing along to music videos as the flirty bartenders serve up drink specials. Nothing feels shameful, even in the darker and kinkier corners of the establishments. You’ll see groups of four, six, eight friends arrive together, hang out together at the bar or in the hot tub, then drift apart to the darker areas. It’s not an all-night outing and it’s a hard closing time, so it’s easy to head out for a bite or a drink afterwards with guys they’ve met.
“On the weekends sometimes you’ll go to warm up before going to a club, but then sometimes these places have their own parties, like an anniversary or birthday,” says Andres. He and I exchanged numbers the first time we met and for our second meeting, he suggested I join him and five of his friends for a Sunday afternoon at, of course, a sauna. “I think gay friends can have a special bond. We can even walk around the same place naked. It’s happened sometimes that one of my friends was having sex in front of me but I didn’t care.”
Most of Medellín’s saunas are in a dense residential area adjacent to the historic centre, not the ritzy and touristy El Poblado area south of downtown. So for a tourist, there’s a thrill in going to places that mostly only locals know about. These saunas are close to what’s considered the city’s gay village, Calle 57A, which makes sense. But many of the simple, small bars on the street have been closing up shop in the last couple of years. Yes, like in North America and Europe, gay bars in Colombia have been struggling and evolving. Some gay nightlife has been surviving by inviting more mixed crowds; on a Friday night, Bogotá’s city-blocked-sized Theatron might have as many straight people as gay.
But the secret sauce of Colombia’s saunas is to remain resolutely dedicated to male homosexuality, even as they add opportunities for homosocialization. Because there’s nothing more conducive to gay men bonding than standing together on a roof deck wearing towels, sipping cocktails and watching the straight people next door have sex.
