We arrived in Santa Cruz, known for being more racially diverse than the rest of Bolivia. Waiting in line to buy our train tickets to the Brazilian border, we saw three light skinned blonde men in overalls and bill caps. They looked like Minnesota farmers, only thinner. No doubt they are from the German-Canadian Mennonite community that is here.
Santa Cruz has a different feel from other Bolivian cities we have visited. It´s wealthier and cleaner, and perhaps due to its multiculturalism (it has communities of Mennonites, Japanese immigrants, Bolivians from the Altiplano, Cuban doctors, descendants of ex-Nazi runaways, Brazilian immigrants and Russians), it has great multicultural cuisine. And unlike Cochabamba, where red lights are merely a suggestion to stop and nobody cares that the homeless people bathe and wash their laundry in the public fountains and hang their laundry out to dry in the plazas, Santa Cruz seems to be a rules following kind of a place. Gary and I, killing a few hours in the plaza while waiting for our train, got in trouble with a cop when we propped our swollen bus-tired feet up while sitting on a park bench!
As the richest people of Bolivia, the residents of Santa Cruz feel the most threatened by Evo Morales´s socialist land reform and nationalization policies, and the department of Santa Cruz has voted to become autonomous. It remains to be seen what that will mean.
At 1,360 feet altitude, compared to Cochabamba´s 8,400, Santa Cruz is hot and muggy. Time to move on. Meanwhile, in other news:
The Bolivian photo I most want to take: A family of 4 or 5 riding together on one bicycle. I see this almost every day, but never have my camera ready at the right moment. Almost as good: A family of four riding on a motorcycle taxi. The fifth was the driver. We saw this in Villa Tunari.
My favorite new Spanish phrase: un viejo verde. A dirty old man. (no, this isn´t in reference to Gary!)
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