Relaxing in Santa Cruz

April 26-29, 2007
Day 575-578

I had been doing a lot of traveling lately, so I decided to relax for a few days once I got to Santa Cruz. The city really brings back memories from when I was here last year. There's the fried chicken restaurant where a Japanese guy tried selling me blinking frogs, the crooked money-changing men in the central plaza, the pretty women selling phone cards one block away, the chola women selling fresh squeezed orange juice all over the place for a quarter a cup, the large amount of SUVs that are way too expensive to be owned by Bolivians, and the delicious vegetarian restaurant that has the Ten Commandments prominently painted on the walls.

While in Santa Cruz, I did a lot of boring but necessary tasks: I got permission to stay in Bolivia for ninety days from the immigration office, bought some cold weather clothes for when I go to the mountains, got my hiking boots (which were falling apart) fixed, got my clothes machine washed for the first time in months, and relaxed and got re-energized for the next segment of my trip.