Santa Cruz

Monday 28th April

I got up early and went for a walk around town, while Andrew had a bit of a sleep in. I found some great art and handicraft shops (and bought more souvenirs of course) and found out some info on Biocentro Guembe - a reserve outside of Santa Cruz that we want to go to this afternoon. I met Andrew back at the hotel at 1000 and we walked to Los Pozos, the huge general market for Santa Cruz. Again, you can basically buy anything you want here - as long as you know where to look. The things on offer were pretty much the same as all the other big cities we have been in, so after wandering around for a while we decided to head back into the centre of the city to find some lunch.

First we stopped at Alexander's coffee (yes, the same cafe chain as in La Paz - oh yeah, good coffee!) and had coffee, then went to a restaurant called Su Salud for a fantastic local lunch (finally, we found decent "local" food in Bolivia). The restaurant was absolutely packed with locals and we only got a seat because a lovely lady invited us to sit with her. The food was so good, and so cheap (B/35 = NZ$6 got us both soup, mains and juice). We had vegetable soup, maracuya (passion fruit) juice and Garbanzo (chickpea) stew with brown rice and salad.

After lunch we caught a taxi out to Biocentro Guembe, which is a reserve/research facility that also caters for tourists with walking trails, cabins, swimming pools, cafe/restaurants, sports, horse riding, kayaking, fishing etc (so kinda like a resort really I guess). Our taxi driver didn't really seem to know where he was going, but we got there eventually. We went on a tour of the reserve and got to see the lab where they do research on butterflies, ants, termites, birds, spiders, snakes and other random stuff, and then got to meet some tortoises, see the butterfly house (with so many beautiful butterflies), and the huge bird enclosure (with a very cool Toucan), as well as a tour of the walking trails etc. We also came across three red and blue Macaws hanging out in a tree, so got some great shots of those too. We then decided it was time for a nice relaxing swim in the pools to cool off before heading back to town. The swim was so good, it was nice to feel cool again, after being hot and sticky for the last day and a half.

We had a great dinner at a German-run pub - La Casona. We both had Bife de Lomo (a thick cut of loin) which was perfectly cooked med-rare, with lots of fried onions, sauteed potatoes with garlic and herbs, and fresh veges (and of course we had dessert - crepes with dulce de leche and ice cream). Tomorrow we have our flight to Buenos Aires, and then we will be on the countdown to the end of our trip (sob, sob :-( ).