Santa Cruz, Bolivia - A Small Moment of Perfection

It was fairly good sleep for a bus and I only vaguely woke when the guy next to me helped his little boy pee into some kind of vessel and when we stopped at a checkpoint and a severe woman in a uniform poked around the cabin with a stick. It was still dark when the bus pulled into Santa Cruz at 5:00 a.m. Knowing it would be a long time before Michael would be able to work his way off the bus, I hurried to disembark and collect our packs and keep an eye on them in the crowded, barely-lighted station.  

We reunited happily and I learned that Michael had been sharing a seat with a whole family. He was in the very back row and had had a kid sleeping along the tops of the seats, and another kid sleeping on the floor between his legs. But he'd been reasonably comfortable. The trip had gone quickly for both of us. And we were pretty relieved to have made it to Santa Cruz.  

 We had a bad moment when we pulled our packs over to a more out of the way area, and noticed that they were loose and slack. The compression straps had been opened. There's nothing particularly valuable in the large packs, but we'd still rather not lose our clothes or miscellanea. But when we immediately rummaged through, everything seemed to be there. Eventually we decided that someone must have examined them at that checkpoint with the mean inspector.  

So then the only thing to do was find a hotel. The station was dark and studded with lumps of passengers sitting or squatting on the concrete, or standing, dull-eyed and waiting. But there were plenty of taxis.  

 We took one to Hotel Amazonas, chosen because it was the cheapest in a small group of possible backup hotels. The taxi driver, who volunteered to wait and make sure we were able to get a room, drove away when he saw the very sleepy hotel guy letting us in. He was gone when we came back out, having been told that there weren't any rooms after all.  

Next door was the Bibosi, where there was a room for us. But when I asked we'd be paying for one night or two, in other words, for the last dregs of the night just ending and the night of today, the 30th, as well (and it sound exactly that confusing in Spanish, only much less grammatical) the guy told us he'd give us a 50% discount on the night ending.

Well that struck me as lame, given that 6:00 a.m. is pretty much morning. So we said we'd come back later. We sat down on the sidewalk outside to wait for it to get light, thinking that would give us more leverage with the whole "it's not last night anymore" argument when we went to the third hotel, the Copacabana across the street. That's when I discovered that poor Michael cared nothing about any of it and would happily have handed over his money to get a place to sleep immediately.  

That's us: I get struck by fits of backpacker penny-pinching and Michael gets struck by fits of being willing to pay any price for anything, principles be damned. Sometimes hindsight proves one of us right and sometimes the other.

I felt bad, but the sky was quickly lightening, and when we saw some other people going into the Copacabana, we went over there too. It's the HI affiliate in Santa Cruz, but the most expensive of the three choices. The price turned out to be too high - nothing to do with principles, it was just kinda high, so we were sincere when we said thanks and turned to leave.

But the manager called us back and gave us a discount that brought them into our range. Feeling bad for Michael, this time I was willing to pay for the morning as well as the coming night. But the manager said he would not charge us, only we could not have the free breakfast today. I thought that was plenty fair, and we went up to our new room. 

 It was very small but bright-colored attractive, with a nice bathroom, big window and TV with cable. We slept until 11:00 a.m. Then we had an almuerzo for 12 bolivianos in the hotel lobby and strolled out to sit in the central park.  

Wow. It was perfect. The air was the perfect temperature and we were perfectly comfortable in our t-shirts and shorts (Michael) and skirt (me), which were actually clean. Leafy trees dappled the sunlight so that it fell in small, pleasant patches all around us as we sat on a bench in the shade and watched the usual assortment of children rolling around on the ground and old men arguing.  

A unique and very enjoyable feature of the park is the presence of strolling coffee-vendors. There were nearly as many of these white-coated men with home-made carts as there were sparrows hopping about. Probably this is bad for their business, but it's nice for the lazy, seated person who has only to raise a hand to immediately summon one. Michael, in lovely Spanish, bought a café cortado.

The coffee, decanted from one of the vendor's many thermoses, was piping hot, as was the added milk, so that we had to let it sit for several minutes to avoid a tongue-scalding. It was sweet and delicious. The warm, gentle breeze was sweet and delicious. The soft rustling of trees was sweet and delicious.

We sat and marveled at the incredible good luck that had brought us through the emotional rut of La Paz, the painfully cold beauty of the Salar de Uyuni, the inconvenient illness of Cochabamba, and the peeing monkeys of Inti Wara Yassi, to this small moment of absolute perfection in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.  

HOURS ON THE BUS: 331.5