Santa Cruz de la Sierra

So, there is a bit of a funny story about our visit to Santa Cruz.  After the number of shorter visits and seeing lots of things in Argentina and Brazil, we felt we need a place of rest to get caught up on school work and future bookings for the trip.  A low cost option would be ideal and as we searched for various flight options to a number of different cities, a lot of flights from Rio connected through an airport called Viru Viru.  Julia thought the name was pretty fun and did some research and it turns Viru Viru is the airport of Santa Cruz which is the fastest growing city in Bolivia and is now the largest city in Bolivia.  It wasn’t on our lists of places to visit initially since we had never heard of it, but it checked all the boxes for a place of rest.  We still chuckle a bit at ourselves that basically we got here because it had a funny airport name.

Our flight to Viru Viru was quite an experience.   Turns out they have a windy season, which is now.  It was quite bumpy!  We found out when we landed that the windy speed was 96 km/hr.  All the palm trees were bent in one direction and it is the first time I’ve been in a 737, parked at the gate, engine powered down, and the plane is still shaking due to the wind.

First impressions of Santa Cruz were good as the girls found their happy place right in the airport when we landed.  Nothing like Cinnabon to get a taste of home. 

Santa Cruz has grown so much in the last couple of decades that it has a lot of modern stores, businesses, and buildings.  The city center itself isn’t really that large and doesn’t have much of what you would think of in a North American city center.  It is all smaller and older buildings with no high rises.  All the big, new and modern buildings are all in the outer ring around the city.  There were lots of big banks, dealerships for almost every kind of car, agricultural dealerships and even a oil changing place that had the Baldwin Filters logo on it (which brought back memories for me since I did the programming for their conveyor system back in the day).

Of course it is still South America and in between these modern buildings were little mom and pop hole in the wall stalls and restaurants.  On the weekends, the larger streets would be filled with street vendors with their wares spread out on blankets covering the sidewalks.  The contrast was highlighted on our first grocery trip.  The grocery store was huge, almost like a Meijer or Walmart and you could find almost anything you need there.  However, walking there we passed a few guys selling fruit and vegetables out of the back of their truck.

Of course, since the intent of this was to have a break from travel and catching up on school work, this was the most common sight of our time in Santa Cruz: kids doing schooling and Julia and I booking the next legs of the journey.  Doesn’t make for quite as an exciting blog post as others, however we did book an excursion out of town on Friday and Saturday which I’ll do as my next post.  So if you want more nature pictures, you can skip ahead to that one   One side note – you can sort of see in the 3rd picture that the sky looks white/grey, not blue.  It was like that for our whole first week.  We asked the locals about it and it was apparently smoke from all the forest fires to the south and east of Santa Cruz.

Since we were in Santa Cruz for two Sundays, I did some research and found an English speaking international church that we could attend.  It was a blessing to join them and it felt familiar.  It was a mix of expats and Bolivians who spoke English.  On our first Sunday there, they had a churrasco (BBQ/potluck) after the service that everyone was invited to so we got our first taste of authentic Bolivian food.  We were told that Bolivia is a very meat and potatoes country and that, in fact, Bolivia has about 4,000 different varieties of potatoes and that potatoes originated in the Andes.  Some of our new found friends gave us tips on restaurants and foods to try while we were in Santa Cruz and we followed their directions!  We have definitely learned to take tips from the locals!

It wasn’t all school – we played Euchre, introduced the girls to the Amazing Race (all the way back to Season 1 to see how it started!) and we took a trip into the city center. The largest building there was Catedral Metropolitana Basílica Menor de San Lorenzo (Cathedral Basilica of St. Lawrence) which we got to see inside and go up the bell tower.  From the tower we could see down into the Plaza 24 de Septiembre, named after the independence date of Santa Cruz.  Also from there we could see a restaurant on the terrace of the building next door (which is just above Annika’s head in the picture above).  We decided to check it out!

It turned out to be a lovely place to have dinner.

A massive share plate/platter of meat and potatoes, Bolivian style of course.  It was delicious, including the fries in the meat juices.  No need for ketchup!  And it provided a good lunch the next day as well.

The cathedral and plaza were also pretty cool as the sun set.  As we were leaving, there was a crowd of people singing, dancing, and playing instruments.

One of the recommendations from our new found friends at church was this café about 10 to 15 minute walk from our AirBnB.  In particular we were to try the sonso and the coffee.  The sonso is the upper left picture and is smashed yucca, mixed with cheese, put on a bamboo stick and then either grilled or fried.  It was delicious and we came back to this cafe multiple times and got some each time.  Of course they had many other delightful treats that we tried as you can see above.

In addition to trying the normal hot chocolate, chai tea, coffee and cappuccino with their fancy frothing designs, we also tried the submarino and the cold brew.  The submarino is hot frothed milk with chocolate on the side.  You are supposed to add the chocolate to the milk and stir to make your own hot chocolate.  The cold brew I was just expecting iced coffee and in a sense this was what it was, but reading about it is a big deal here and quite the process.   It is more like ice tea in the Southern US.  The coffee is made in large batches and actually brewed cold for 8 and 12 hours depending on the type of bean.  This café actually bottles their own to keep it fresh and it was the best cold coffee I have ever had.

We also found a really good pizza place right around the corner from our AirBnB.  The girls thought it was funny that they got beer mugs for their Fanta like I got for my beer.  They also loved the wooden plates.  Pizza was really good with interesting combinations, like the dried plums and bacon.

In the end, Santa Cruz served its purpose and was a good place to slow down, study, and recharge.

Rio de Janeiro

Kind of like Buenos Aires, we only had a few days in Rio so we hit the highlights.  Also like Buenos Aires, it is a very large city so we only got a sample.  Where Buenos Aires had some interesting architecture, Rio impresses with it’s rocky peaks and large nature areas.  From above it is simply beautiful, however when you get down into the nitty gritty of the city, some of the glamour wears off. 

Overall we are glad we visited and enjoyed our time there even though it wasn’t as relaxing as we were hoping.  We had discovered a few weeks ago that our last day there was the equivalent of the Brazilian independence day and not only that, it was their 200th anniversary.  Since we were unsure what would be open on the holiday, we decided to book our touristy site-seeing events for the days before and save Copacabana beach for the holiday, figuring the beach would at least be open. 

The first part went according to plan, but the night before the holiday, we got a notification from the Canadian government saying that there was a risk of unrest in Copacabana which is the area we were staying at.  Evidently, President Bolsonaro (who is facing an election in October and behind in the polls) was planning on visiting Copacabana in the afternoon to rally his supporters, and when he did that last year it had caused some unrest.  In speaking with our hotel to get their input, we decided to leave early in the morning for the beach but return to our room for the afternoon.  We half tried to enjoy the beach but also half kept our eyes on the growing crowds, ready to leave for our hotel if we felt things were getting out of control.  Even though we saw some political flags, most were Brazilian flags and it felt more like people celebrating a national holiday than a protest.  Even still, we felt it was best to stay at the hotel for the afternoon just in case, which did put a bit of a damper on our beach experience.

Christ the Redeemer

There are a few options for getting to the top, and we opted for the train which was a lot of fun.  The kids snagged a front seat with the view on the way down and I was fascinated that it was a three track system, with the center rail being geared.  The track was so steep it needed that center rail to climb.

It is hard to capture how big it is in pictures when you are right under it, but it is pretty big!  Even though it was a cloudy day, I’d argue that the view was just as good if not better than the statue itself.

For Annika, I think it was the monkeys that were the best part.

For being off season, it was still quite busy up there, we suspect because of the upcoming holiday.  Since it was our only thing scheduled for the day, we decide to stay at the top for a while to see if the clouds would clear some.  It was fun to watch the crowds and see people trying to get different selfies with the statue.  We also got to watch some maintenance being done with a man climbing up the side.

Sugarloaf Mountain

It was a much sunnier day for our double gondola ride to the top of Sugarloaf!

Of course the view was spectacular with a lot of Copacabana beach, Christ the Redeemer, and a lot of Rio visible.

The backside of Sugarloaf had some great trails (i.e. stairs!) through a lovely forest/jungle.  We had some more acai and enjoyed the view from this angle as well.  One thing of curiosity was watching all these navy warships maneuver out of the bays and into the open sea.  We understood later why that was happening.

Copacabana Beach

Since we went early, the beach didn’t feel crowded though it did get busier as the day progressed.  We had walked the street along the beach in the days before and that part was definitely more filled with with people on the Independence Day (with the main street being blocked to cars that day).

In walking the street in the days before, the girls had noticed that there were women setup along the street that would braid your hair.  Marika decided she wanted to do that but Annika wasn’t sure.  On our beach day though, we couldn’t find them setup on the street, most likely because of the celebrations scheduled on the street.  However, we soon discovered that simply sitting on the beach, you get solicited for all sorts of stuff, including braiding.  Once Marika was almost done, Annika decided that it was worth while to do and decided to join in.

It was decently wavy on that day.  Given the uncertainty of the day, we had decided we wouldn’t go swimming but maybe just do some wading.  Turns out very few locals were swimming due to the size of the waves and most were just wave jumping like us.  We discovered that one of the “parades” for the holiday was navy ships cruising past the beach which explains why we were seeing so many from Sugarloaf Mountain the day before.  Over the course of the morning we saw 12 ships go by including an aircraft carrier.  There was even some other navies invited and we saw a US destroyer and a Chilean destroyer sail by.  There may have been more, but we left around lunch time.

Thankfully the morning stayed relatively calm so we felt we could stay for lunch on the beach.  Though we wish we could have stayed longer, we are thankful that not only could we experience what we did, but in the end that we stayed safe and there was nothing serious that happened this year during the celebrations.