Santa Cruz De La Sierra

3pm
I’m sitting here at Parque El Arenal in Santa Cruz. The rushing waters of the fountain are dimmed by the noise of a worker welding together a part of the metal fence that surrounds this strange little park. There is a manmade lake with two tall fountains and a cement path around it filled with benches. There are actually quite a few people walking around the lake or sitting on the benches, most of them couples. In the middle of the lake, there is a cement island with some trees and greenery, but mostly filled with construction items. Like most places in Santa Cruz, it’s pretty run down with peeling paint, graffiti, and just doesn’t have the appearance that it is maintained.
Appearance-wise, I think Santa Cruz is the ugliest city that I’ve been in. The sky is finally blue right now, but yesterday was grey and humid and this morning was pretty gloomy as well. Although there are actually garbage cans around and therefore much less litter on the streets, most of the buildings are old and dirty. There are plenty of trees planted around the city, but it doesn’t have the natural surrounding beauty that I’ve seen in so many other places. It reminds me a bit of Lima, another city that in its move towards modernization, has left behind its cultural upkeep and just raced towards becoming much more commercial and westernized. Walking down the streets in the central area, there are mostly large stores with neat displays like I would find back home, some individual and some in towering malls. There are also the streets filled with salons or jewelry sellers, but it is all much more upscale than I’ve seen elsewhere. Cochabamba was also a bit like this, but I didn’t spend enough time there to get a real sense of the city. It’s really strange not to have a central market in which to wander, and it’s much harder to find vendors on the street or in the plaza. In Sucre, I was so used to buying ice cream on the street for 2 or 3Bs, but here it’s rare to find a vendor pushing around an ice cream cart – there are ice cream parlors everywhere that cost 3-4 times what they would elsewhere. Last night, everyone was walking around with a Styrofoam container filled with a massive amount of ice cream. I later discovered that it was half price on Tuesdays at one shop and there were mobs of people surrounding it, waiting with their tickets for quite a while for their delicacies to be prepared. The streets are crowded with micros, taxis, and private cars. Some intersections have traffic lights, which as usual are just for cars, not people, as cars always have right of way on turns. Though I was amazed today when a taxi actually stopped and let me cross the street in front of him. Usually I just need to run across whenever there’s a moment without cars, or dodge between them as they are stopped in traffic, often having to wait wedged between cars until I can pass another few meters. It’s become quite a habit to just cross wherever – there are sometimes crosswalks, but there are less cars in the middle of the street than at the intersection, so that’s where it is easiest to cross.
Santa Cruz has by far been the easiest city to navigate. Maybe I’m getting a better sense of direction, but it definitely helps that there are actually street signs on almost every corner. In other cities, if there are signs at all, the street name is painted on maybe on of the four corners so that you can only see it from certain angles. Usually, though, there is nothing on a corner and the only way to tell where you are is to find a building that has its address on a tiny placard above the door. Though most of the time, locals just know, so I would sometimes have to walk a block or two to figure out what intersection I was near. There also aren’t any hills here and the main part of the city is in an easily navigable grid. I think this is the first city that I actually know which direction is which on the map; I haven’t got lost once! Outside of the central area, the city branches out in numbered anillos (rings) and radiales (spokes) that connect the rings. Because the city has been developing so fast, I’ve done a bunch of useless wandering. My Lonely Planet guidebook is usually awesome at telling me where places are and how much things cost. It was written a year ago, but is way out of date for Santa Cruz. I go to a place where something is supposed to be, and it’s either moved or doesn’t exist anymore – that must have happened at least four times today!
Though Santa Cruz certainly isn’t the most attractive, it does have an interesting cultural environment to take in. Yesterday was a yet another holiday so aside from internet cafes and some restaurants, everything was closed. There were tons of people at these two giant café/restaurant/ice cream shops – Picolo and Dumbo’s. Both are huge buildings with balloons, countless staff, and people lounging for hours in large groups. The furniture was all brightly colored and the chairs were those interestingly shaped plastic kind. The sides of the cafes are lined with displays of endless baked goods and ice cream. Both of them have kids’ areas with plastic balls to jump in and colorful jungle gyms to climb all over. Those who weren’t at these family party places were spending their holiday afternoons at the central plaza – it was exploding with people sitting on benches - families, young and old couples, groups of friends. Kids run around and play while others relax with their coffee and cigarettes. There aren’t the typical vendors that I’ve always seen in plazas elsewhere, but there are old men pushing around carts filled with thermoses. Everyone buys little Styrofoam cups that he fills mostly with boiling hot milk to which he adds a shot of sweetened espresso. There’s a statue in the middle of the big plaza and tall trees all throughout. It is edged with the typical green shoe-shining stations. Near the towering church is an area with less trees where all of the pigeons congregate, chattering away as they walk and fly amongst the people. Most people seem to spend a good deal of their time just sitting and talking in the plaza – it’s always hard to find a spot on the bench, even though the park is filled with them. Life is very laid back in this bustling city, where the local pastime seems to be sitting outside or spending an afternoon at one of the many high end cafes. It’s an interesting experience to just sit amongst them and listen to the laughter and chattering around me.
Yesterday was the Aymara New Year, which occurs every year on the winter solstice. Very few crucenos (people of Santa Cruz) are of indigenous background – most Aymara people live on the other end of the country, and there were massive celebrations yesterday in the areas around La Paz, the biggest at the ruins of Tiwanaku. So here, I couldn’t find any festivities going on aside from people enjoying their days off of work (paid for all who work in any sort of official business). Walking the streets, I’ve encountered very few people in traditional dress, and those who I found were very impoverished, sitting on the sidewalks with their children, begging for money. At least in the central part of the city, there is very little poverty, though that which exists is very striking in contrast to the richer life that abounds. I’ve seen countless locals here with light skin, something that was very uncommon elsewhere in Bolivia aside from Cochabamba. Most everyone is dressed in modern clothing, carrying around fancy cell phones and digital cameras. Women walk in their high strappy shoes and boys are decked out with shiny tennis shoes and headphones. Children are pushed in strollers or carried in their mothers’ arms rather than strapped on their backs. It’s very clearly a city that is taking on ways of the western world, though it is unfortunately leaving a lot of its culture behind. Unlike everywhere else I’ve been, there’s no central market – there is a small Mercado on the outskirts of the city, but it’s not where everyone goes to do all their shopping – there are malls and grocery stores instead. It’s much harder here to find traditional meals, though the international cuisine is plentiful and supposed to be quite good (and expensive). For lunch, I found a vegetarian buffet with some pretty good options, though it charged by the kilo so I had to be very careful how much I put on my plate! For an early dinner, I went to a bakery that smelled absolutely amazing and everything looked so good – I had the person working there choose four of her favorite things for me. Wrapped in a banana leaf was a banana, yucca, and cheese delicacy, and there was a huminta with cheese and corn in a tamale leaf. Also had a little empanada of cheese, onions, and garlic, and a little cinnamon bun. Smelled so good, but there was nowhere to sit there and bask in the smell. Lucky people who work there! One of my favorite other pastries that they have around here is a cunape, which is doughy with cheese and some form of starch, slightly different each time – they are amazing when they are warm.
As one heads away from the city towards the surrounding jungle areas, there still exist colonial religious areas including a chain of Jesuit mission towns, as well as Amazonian communities. But in central Santa Cruz, that all seems to be washed away by the race towards modern ways of life. As I took the micro to the bus terminal on the outskirts of the city to get things figured out for our departure tomorrow, we definitely passed by areas that I was more used to seeing – frequent tiendas selling your basic home and food supplies, stalls of miscellaneous electronics, dustier people with more worn out clothes – an entirely different environment. In Sucre, old and new were perfectly blended together, but here, they are so much more distinctly apart. Nevertheless, it’s fascinating to walk around and watch the city and its developing culture pass me by.
There’s really not much to do here aside from stroll the streets, relax in the plaza, and eat. I went to one small museum this morning describing one Amazonian culture, and I’ll go to another this afternoon. Washed all my clothes in preparation for the jungle and I’m getting all of my electronics charged because it’s time for a month with no electricity, except for the occasional trip into town. Tomorrow I’m going to meet Tessa at the airport and then take two micros to the terminal, where we will take a bus for five hours to the town of Guarayos, and then catch another bus to reach the park. It looks like we may not be able to work with cats because there is a waiting list right now, so it may be monkeys and other smaller animals for us, and I’m also going to try to work a bit with the park vet. Though fingers crossed that I will still get a bit of interaction with some of the cats; I really want to go swimming with a puma!