Arriving Santa CruzOct 18, 2009
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| We arrived at Santa Cruz about 7am in the morning. As we bumped into Hugh, whom we met in the salt flat tour, and that we both wanted to stay in the same hostel, we decided to share a taxi to our next hostel. The hostel turns out to be pretty nice with two courtyards filled with tropical plants and hammocks. To be fair, it was the description of hammocks that attracted us to the place in the first place. As it turned out, they have run out of double rooms and the three of us ended up sharing a dorm. Santa Cruz is a lot warmer than Sucre at 400m above sea level. Here it felt like we are in a different country. It’s properly tropical with the warm weather and humid climate. As we arrived at Santa Cruz on a Sunday, the town was pretty dead as expected - It seems to be the common sight in Bolivia. When it’s Sunday all shops seem to shut and everyone goes to church. We had some breakfast with Hugh at some Gringo place near the main plaza and after a quick stroll around town we decided that there were nothing to see. The city was pretty flat and very quiet as expected on a Sunday. The city looked a bit like Sucre but not that much. The buildings were of similar size but not as grand. The buildings were not as white-washed as Sucre either. But it had a similar feel to it. Since there wasn’t too much to see we headed back to the hostel and spend the rest of the day reading books in the hammocks instead. As we headed back to the hostel we went into a local bookstore that actually turned out to be open. It had a nice selection of books although most of them were a bit dusty. We managed to find a few Spanish books to practice our Spanish with. I bought a nice books with a pictures to practice my Spanish vocabulary. Marcus got some easy-to-read books that should hopefully do wonders for his Spanish… We ended up heading out for some lunch at the local market. It was located on the fifth floor and full of locals. I had Mani Soup which is made of peanuts and only served on Wednesdays. It actually tasted pretty nice - I had expected it to taste like peanut butter. Marcus was slightly less adventurous and went for the chicken escalope. It turned out to be a slightly uninteresting choice. After the lunch we bought some fresh juices from a stall. My papaya milk was perfect and Marcus was very content with his strawberry milk. At dinner time, the three of us again went for dinner together and went to a place recommended by both Marcus’ teacher and the lonely planet - La Casa Cambas. The place was pretty Mexico like and we had a very good time chatting anything from travel plans to current gold and oil prices with live music at the background. At the restaurant we had a nice Bolivian dish. It reminded us of risotto but it was made with duck. It came with some pretty nice side dishes as well. Most of them were quite spicy and they went nicely with the food. Iris |
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