We had a lovely hotel in Santa Cruz and on the first day back just went lounged about and watched movies on the TV that amazingly had Netflix. We needed the rest. More importantly we needed the laundry as our clothes were almost walking around by themselves, mine were anyway. The bonus was finding a place that sold decent coffee. It’s really weird because coffee is grown here and it’s been so difficult to find anything that tastes good.
We went to buy provisions for making lunch and Jayne (who in my house was once known as a ‘choca-gobbler’ by my son when he was young) saw some very cheap ‘good brand’ of chocolate. She clearly feels it’s one of her five-a-day, when I can take it or leave it. We must have been very tired because neither of us realised the price of it, about £16 not £1.60 (In our defence there are too many zeros in Bolivianos). Needless to say we returned it! Using Google translate to explain it was an error, the customer service person said “that’s a poor excuse” but they gave us the refund anyway! Jayne then had to settle for M&Ms!
The next day we visited the old part of the town. It seemed poor, some of the buildings having seen better days, it was not gentrified. We ambled to a place recommended for lunch however we opted for a very busy food hall where we had ‘mystery meat’ soup for a few pence.
My dish had a huge bone in it and then another chap nearby had chicken feet in his! It was basic and tasty. I think Jayne was a little put off by the chicken feet but she had eaten most of hers by then.
We wandered for a while and visited an art museum with some very strange gold sculptures.
Before we leave Bolivia, I wanted to mention the ‘Lost’ cars. These cars don’t have registration plates, (we saw some lorries too). They are not legal, likely stolen in the US and often poorly maintained with no working lights. They are everywhere and the government here seems to do little about it. We discovered we were riding in one to the Madidi reserve. Eek!
We’ve had comms problems all through Bolivia much to my frustration. In Santa Cruz town centre I tried to book a taxi only to find I had no signal and it’s not a safe place to flag a taxi. The irony was not lost on me in such a run down sort of place there was a ‘Starbucks’ coffee shop with fantastic WiFi which they let us use without a purchase.
Well that’s it, we leave Bolivia and next is Buenos Aires home of Argentine Tango!
The Travelling Bee 