Santa Cruz, Bolivia: Not to be confused with its hippie Northern American counterpart

We have no good pictures of Santa Cruz, mostly because there is nothing good to take a picture of. 

 Thus, here we are  in La Paz, happy to be out of Santa Cruz.

It's 10am.  We've been in Santa cruz for one day.  The place is a bit dreary, and yet is the richest city in Bolivia.  A month in brazil has decimated our budget and we just spent three days lapping up the luxurious life in puerto quijaro.  Bolivia is our savior, at least the prices are.

We pack up our stuff from our current low-budget, tenderloin housing hotel to head over to the cheapest place in town--Residencial Acbar.

The day before we did a quick walk thru looking for the standard signs not to stay: filthy bedding, often portending to bed bugs, bathrooms out of a Tarantino film, street walkers on the corner and excessive amounts of bars (on windows, door frames, managerial offices, et al).  The place failed only the bar test, but redeemed itself with interior decorating straight out of the Mickey mouse club (admittedly this would normally make my you-know-what puker, but this is Bolivia, so it makes me feel all warm and safe inside).  So, we returned via sweltering winter heat and fifteen blocks of the madest drivers in the world.

What we found is that the bar test is clearly the most important test regarding safety, and clearly useless when dealing with armed bandits.  We walk in and the first thing we notice is an Irishman (well, perhaps not the first thing we saw, he was a weeeeee bit small) with a recently found shiner, a frantic French girl (neurotically chain smoking and solidifying more American-French cliches) and two Bolivian police officers.  Through deep draws of a cigarette and a mildly unintelligble accent we learned the following:

- the black eyed Irishman was robbed last night.
- he came home in a taxi at 4am (this is Bolivia AND Santa Cruz at that, so he could have potentially been doing absolutely anything).
- he was accompanied by the "taxi driver" and, according to the hostel owner, two friends--in this case friends being two men with guns pointed directly at Irishman's head, not to mention bestowing upon him the gift of Shiner.
- his "friends" stole the owners keys to the hostel, the owners cell phone, and, after stripping the Irishman down to his skivies, stole all his cash and cell phone, as well.  
- friends then proceeded to lock everybody in the hostel, possibly as a prank, but more likely so they couldn't get out to, a) see criminals get-away, b) call the police, c) chase armed men with stolen cell phones.

That's not all either, not only did the Irishman suffer the violation of derobing in front of strangers, but the police wanted to bring him in (read: arrest) because he refused to pay the owner for his stolen cell phone (owner's completely "valid" argument being that he [Irishman] brought his friends in the first place).  After slipping a $20 to the cops and agreeing to pay for his last night/thrilling-experience, at the hostel, all the Irishman had to do was take a brief trip downtown.

During the thirty minutes the cops took to sort it out--and after the manic French girl's 10 minute debriefing--we discussed our options.  To stay, for half the price of anywhere else, or to go.  This took the better part of the remaining twenty minutes.

Yes, twenty minutes to decide if we would stay in the hostel that was raided by gunmen the previous night, one man being full-montyd, robbed and held at gunpoint (by his own words, pressed to the side of his head).

Now, I've always thought I was frugal, at worst, and incredibly cheap, at best, but you never really know the true dedication you have to something until you face the possibility of getting strip-robbed at gunpoint.  I'm proud to say I got within a hangnail of winning the gold-medal of cheap.  A chance encounter with an American deciding to leave, and imparting a bit of exchange-rate wisdom, pointing out that it was only about $2.50 more a night/person, pushed us back into the realm of sanity, saving us from our continuingly more reckless and miserly ways, and sending us back through the hords of bad drivers, to our original, and minimally bar'd hotel.  So, we left, safe for one more night, but a little poorer for it.

Note(s):
- We gringo'd ourselves silly in Santa Cruz.  Irish pubs, US football, NBA finals game 7, the Bolivian Rainforest Cafe (complete with absurdly ecclectic menu, i got a BBQ bacon cheeseburger, and CD rain sounds--though it sounded more like a Safeway vegetable section), bagel sandwiches, and a room with a television.
- We are off to a small town named Samaipata next, but we are planning on returning here to see the only "must-see" site, the worlds largest butterfly biodome, which sounds a bit like the worlds largest Popsicle stick house, but still, I'm intrigued. (note: we never returned to Santa Cruz, thankfully)
- Best quote (from an English speaking Bolivano while addressing our surprise at the large amount of Mexican food available): "Yeah, there are lots of Mexicans here.  We have three in our neighborhood..you know, the drug trade and all." (Not where you thought that was going, huh?)
- Santa Cruz, like Rio, also seems to have an excessive appreciation of Jesus.  They show their love more conventionally, however, by having Jesus of Nazareth ATMs surrounding their central plaza.  Surprisingly enough, I was unable to extract money from the Jesus machine, something about "deficient tithings" being quoted as the source of problem.