This past Monday was Cochabamba day, so we decided to go to Santa Cruz to celebrate. Anniversaries are huge here, so much so that the city's birthday is a state holiday. This year September the 14th landed on a Monday, giving us a long weekend, so we decided to go along with John and Jenny to visit the fabled city of Santa Cruz, the largest city in Bolivia settled in the middle of the Amazon basin. This jungle sunset and the warm air made me almost forget we had to leave.
Friday night we lef the bus terminal at 10:00pm and woke up, still on the bus, about 8am at a small roadside hut to eat our first jungle breakfast. Finally about 10am we got to the station and from there headed to the main square to find a hotel. Once settled in we looked for food. We had been told that Santa Cruz is a great city to find great food. It seems like most all foreign immigrants to Bolivia end up here (we even found a Russian restaurant!) and people have a little more money to spend on restaurants so we went looking for food we couldn't find in our city, and we weren't disappointed.
Ann even found this place, which wasn't a restaurant but sold everything Swiss you could think of. We walkd in and felt like we were in some gift shop in Switzerland.
We were, however, a little disappointed in the city in general. I guess we had heard from all the Calvert students who vacation there about how great it is, but it must only be great to those who can afford to fly there on the weekends to go shopping at all the fancy stores (and they did have a lot of those). I loved the weather though-- HOT. We were most excited about being somewhere hot that also had a waterpark, but we got a taxi all the way out to Aqualand only to find it is closed for the season, but will reopen in just 2 WEEKS. Close, but no cigar. Instead we went to a butterfly place someone recommended which turned out to be way cooler than just a butterfly place. They had some cool pools, all shallow and small enough for landlocked Bolivians who are afraid of water, plus lakes (complete with monkey island), walking and biking trails, the butterfly cage thing we were told about, and an even cooler bird place. It was the biggest cage I have ever seen. We could walk through it on the floor of the jungle or on the boardwalk up above. I felt like we were in Jurassic Park or somthing.
We also got to see the Zoo, which was fun and especially interesting because of the animals running around loose in the Zoo (I wouldn't say this sloth was running anywhere, but the giant ant eater did give me a start when he snuck up behind the bench I was sitting on)
. Sorry I couldn't figure out how to turn the dang picture around. But one of the things I loved most was the beautiful plaza in the center of the city. Cochabamba has a cool plaza too, but his place seemed to be where everybody met each other, either to go to Mass, or sit on a bench and talk, or go to a concert, or play chess at one of the many boards around the square. Sunday night the place was packed with people just taking a stroll or chatting on a bench. You'd probably have to take a stroll around the plaza a few times yourself if you wanted to find a spot to sit on a bench, and they say this is normal every weekend. It was nice to feel the warm air at night, somthing we miss here, not having that nice hot summer weather of Chattanooga. It was a good weekend. It is hard to get away from here sometimes, and when we left I kinda felt bad, like we were jumping ship on the pastor and all our other responsabilities here. I don't know, but I guess it was worth it to get away and see somthing else. And now we know we don't have anything else to do in Santa Cruz, unless it's get there in order to go exploring somewhere else in the jungle. And I still want to get to that waterpark.
Ann even found this place, which wasn't a restaurant but sold everything Swiss you could think of. We walkd in and felt like we were in some gift shop in Switzerland.
. Sorry I couldn't figure out how to turn the dang picture around. But one of the things I loved most was the beautiful plaza in the center of the city. Cochabamba has a cool plaza too, but his place seemed to be where everybody met each other, either to go to Mass, or sit on a bench and talk, or go to a concert, or play chess at one of the many boards around the square. Sunday night the place was packed with people just taking a stroll or chatting on a bench. You'd probably have to take a stroll around the plaza a few times yourself if you wanted to find a spot to sit on a bench, and they say this is normal every weekend. It was nice to feel the warm air at night, somthing we miss here, not having that nice hot summer weather of Chattanooga. It was a good weekend. It is hard to get away from here sometimes, and when we left I kinda felt bad, like we were jumping ship on the pastor and all our other responsabilities here. I don't know, but I guess it was worth it to get away and see somthing else. And now we know we don't have anything else to do in Santa Cruz, unless it's get there in order to go exploring somewhere else in the jungle. And I still want to get to that waterpark.
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