Thursday, August 21, 2008

Samaipata was another day trip from Santa Cruz for me. It was supposed to be a couple of hours but the day before it had rained which washed out the roads. It took more than 4 hours to get there. Again, I arrived just before siesta and so the town was shut behind closed doors napping. There is a small foreign community there. I saw a little evidence of it including a number of very dirty hippies.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Buena Vista, a day trip from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, is very small and very quiet. I unfortunately arrrived right before siesta so it was very very quiet. Some people in Bolivia recommended it. I can completely understand why they would love it as a quiet retreat from the busyness of Santa Cruz. However, it´s not for me. A bit too quiet.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Okay, so Bolivia has minus for breakfast beverages but they score 2 pluses for tea time. They have an awesome tea, well not the beverage but the afternoon snack. They have dozens of baked goods that they eat mid afternoon. My favorite is cunapes which are yucca and cheese balls. A little chewy and yummy.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

In Thailand there was thai iced tea. In Vietnam, there was Vietnamesse drip coffee with sweetened condensced milk and cafe trung (egg coffee). In India, they have the world famous chai tea. In Bolivia, nada. Well, nothing worth waking up for. I have yet to discover a quality breakfast beverage. The tea is lipton, or something equally bad and the coffee is instant. Why these people get up day after day is beyond me.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

When I landed here in Bolivia, I rapidly came to the conslusion I knew zero Spanish. This started wtih immigration in the La Paz airport, followed byt meeting my friend´s Bolivian mother. I´m in Santa Cruz without the constant supervision of my new Bolivian Family. This morning I managed to eat a saltana, with a coke. I thought she was saying solo but apparently she was saying soda. Not a great interaction but ok. Then I stopped into a small cellphone store because my MF phone decided to ask for a pins and finally a puk code, whatever that is. The lovely women at teh store managed to tell me, in Spanish, that I needed the original card, which was in La Paz, and gave me directions to the main entel office. Did understand 100%? No but maybe 50%. I was quite pleased with myself. I thought back to my visits to all these Asian countries where I knew virtually none of the language. (However, these other countries spoke more English than here in Bolivia, suprisingly). I was very often virtually helpless. So, with my little bit of confidence I set off to the entel office to fix my phone. They essentially told me the same thing that without the card there was no help. I found out there that Bolivians are basically Americans. If it seems teh person understnads even a little keep talking. If they seem to understand nothing, talk more and faster, a little volume helps. Also, act a little disgusted the person could be so stupid as to not understand.