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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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Santa Cruz was originally not on our itinerary but what an addition! Little over 50 years ago Santa Cruz was a small town of around 30,000 but it blossomed with the narcotics trade and now has over 2 million inhabitants. It is not a place for sightseeing as there is pretty much nothing to see here apart from the obligatory central plaza that exists in every town. Is is, however, famous for its nightlife. The main nightlife area Equipetrol is a whole street that teems with people at night and is full of bars and clubs. The Bolivians also like to park their cars at the side of this street, pump up the volume of their car stereos and have a party right on the street.
We stayed in the best hostel (Jodanga) of our trip so far. Andres, the owner, was gifted his parents house a few months ago and he has converted it to a hostel. There was a pool around a central courtyard, a really realxing tv area with bean bags and pool table. We were extremely lucky as a good bunch of people checked in around the same time as us so it was pretty much a really good group from the off. The weather is really hot in Santa Cruz as well so during the day it was lounge about the pool time to recoup some energy lost in the mountains.
Andres was 26 so keen on going out with everyone so he organised trips to local nightclubs every night. He really set us up well as we got entrance to the best clubs. On the second night in town we went to a really upmarket club called AquaBlue where all the backpackers from the hostel felt really underdressed as the locals really made an effort. The females on show were stunning and whilst on the dancefloor I got introduced to the current Miss Bolivia - yes, she was quite nice! The rest of the weekend was really more of the same - well it was interspersed by a trip to Las Lomas De Arenas, which is an oasis about 30mins south of Santa Cruz. We attempted sandboarding there but the dunes were really not high enough.
On the Sunday we found out that there was a local footie derby between the two Santa Cruz teams, Blooming and Oriente. We went down and bought tickets in the morning for $3.50 and then decided to buy football tops. Luckily for us our seats were not in the crazy area where the opposition tops would not have went down well. The game itself was a typical South American affair - a few sendings off, plenty of bottles and objects hurled at the players, and the obligatory escort for the referees by the riot police. By the way the game ended 1-1 but the experience certainly topped the quality of football - now I know why I dont know any Bolivian footballers!
Monday was unfortunately time to leave this great place, or so we thought! We had a flight from Santa Cruz to Sucre. We arrived at the airport, checked in and found out our flight was delayed due to bad weather in Sucre. Sucre is perched at 2700m and the airport is between two mountains with quite a short runway. After a few hours delay our flight took off for Sucre. We prepared to land in Sucre but then noticed the plane veering up and the captain telling us that he was heading back to Santa Cruz as he was unable to land - possibly a lucky escape. We got back in Santa Cruz and were talking to two English girls on our flight about what to do next - they answered that we should find a hostel to stay in Sucre!! They did not quite realise that we had turned around and landed at the same airport as we departed - dozy was coming to mind!
We managed to get a ticket for the next day to Sucre and stayed in the same hostel for another night to the surprise of everyone there. Given that we were back it would have been amiss not to go out again so we did. And Santa Cruz does have direct flights to Europe. Tempting or what.
previous travel blog entry
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