Santa Cruz de los Anillos, Bolivia

JUNE 2015
Santa Cruz de la Sierra is the major city in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia: modern, tropical, and growing fast. From the air it looks like a spider web, with the carreteras intersected by a series of anillos (rings) numbered 1-7  starting in the center.
I’m in Santa Cruz to visit my friend who lives here with her family. It’s June, ‘winter’ here, and my altiplano cough keeps me down with the cool rainy swing days of the week I visit. On the days we go out, we jump through the 1st ring into the Plaza Mayor and hang around the 4th between Ventura Mall and the north.
Getting around is confusing and public transit can’t keep up with the new development, so car and taxi culture dominates in these parts.

It may not be a pretty city, but fashion blooms here. My friend has 2 designer friends who live here and just launched their Papingo Maminga 2015 seasonal line, and it is modern and tropical, just like Santa Cruz. They also have opened a store in Ventura Mall here on the 4th anillo.




Down in the Plaza, sitting on the steps of the cathedral and admiring the big old trees, I wonder what this city was like in its earlier days.

In the cathedral, we light colored candles sold outside its doors, and they melt in ways not seen before.

In the booming vaca-economy of Santa Cruz, my friend explains, beef is popular and maybe better than other parts of central South America.

The majadito is a typical dish, with egg, platano, and rice with beef mixed in, but in my opinion, it would be better without the beef. (((that would be more or less ‘arroz a la cubana’ which becomes my favorite desayuno in the Peruvian Amazon)))
Instead, I enjoy savory empanadas and hot tea while trying to get well and dreaming about what lies beyond the 7th anillo, in the hilly cloud forest to the west…..

An interactive map of Santa Cruz and its anillos is on this link:
http://www.boliviabella.com/santa-cruz-map.html

Santa Cruz tropical arts:

“Neptune’s Daughter” sculpture by Rene Paz

-Arianna