We knew we wanted to start our Latin American journey in Bolivia as it is a great place to learn Spanish (needed for us to immerse ourselves in this part of the world). Bolivia is not the most accessible country from Europe but we found decent flights from London (via Madrid) with Air Europa. Flights only went to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia’s largest city by population and it’s commercial hub. Unlike most of Bolivia, Santa Cruz is at low altitude so it is a decent place to start out before getting acclimatised.
There isn’t much we can say about Santa Cruz. It isn’t really on the tourist route and doesn’t need to be in my opinion. There wasn’t much to do and the promise of perfect weather failed and it was blowing a gale both days we were there so we spent most of the time getting organised and researching for the rest of the trip. To be fair, there are meant to be some good parks in the area but the weather prohibited us from checking these out!
We did follow a tip from a blog we’ve come to like – AlongDustyRoads (who have a lot more tips on what to do in Santa Cruz) – and headed to a spot where apparently you can stand in the centre of South America. My subsequent reading suggests that this accolade actually belongs to somewhere in Brazil but if taking a photo in a small and dusty neighbourhood park with a cross marking possibly the centre of South America is your tourism dream then this is not to be missed (it is called Plaza Callejas of you really need to know!). Sadly the tip that the local bakery next door serves amazing Salteñas (more on those in a future post) was sadly wrong – they were dry and average at best.
The main plaza, Plaza 24 de Septiembre, has a simple but nice cathedral that you can climb for about 50 cents. It offers a good view of the (quite flat) city and is a good starting point to get your bearings. It was pretty windy when we went up so we didn’t hang about too long!
We did find a cafe serving very good coffee that I’d recommend! Be Coffee, is just around the corner from the cathedral and also has decent empanadas.
We stayed at Cosmopolitano Boutique Hotel that is well located in a safe, quiet and central area. Each room has a unique design and all rooms are very modern and well equipped. There is a small open air plunge pool but due to the unusual weather it was filled with leaves during our stay and didn’t appeal. Staff were OK but I think would have been more helpful if we had more Spanish.
We head off from Santa Cruz to Sucre a little flat and not yet in love with Bolivia but we expected that coming in and as many of you will know, we rarely love anywhere on first impressions. I guarantee the next post to be more upbeat 🙂
