26/5/09 After a night of only on-and-off sleep (in my case), we were given breakfast on the train; a pot of yoghurt, a cheese and ham sandwich and a drink. Then a couple of hours later, we arrived in Santa Cruz. It's one of the biggest cities in Bolivia but has a relatively small centre, and isn't really on the tourist trail. We were only there for that day, so all Dave and I did until the evening was wander round the main square and surrounding streets, and go on the internet. Before this everybody had brunch at a cafe - I'm sorry to say that I had a delicious icecream sundae, but after all it is the first one I've had on our entire trip!
The square was surrounded by lots of lovely historical buildings, and we popped into one of them, which was the Cathedral. This had beautiful decoration inside, and wall plaques, models and statues of Jesus and different saints, including a shrine to San Lorenso, the Cathedral's patron saint. There were shoe-shiners in the square, and we spotted a man selling big wall maps of South America, standing on the pavement near to the cafe where we'd had brunch. Both of us wanted one as a souvenir, but first of all we nipped back into the cafe, where some of the others still were, to ask how to say 'how much is it' in Spanish. When we stepped back out onto the pavement a minute later, the man had disappeared! We looked around, because surely he couldn't have gone far, but we couldn't find him again. We were kicking ourselves for not having just plunged in with buying the maps despite not knowing the Spanish for it, but then later on we found out that you can buy them in La Paz as well, so we weren't too disappointed. I went on the internet after this, but after only about half an hour I was made to get off. I assumed it was so they could have a siesta, because it was between 1 and 2 pm by then, and other shops seemed to be closing as well.
After this we walked round the streets nearby the square and our hostel, wandering through some markets and shops. I bought a couple of presents for certain people, but didn't get anything else. In the evening nearly everyone went out for dinner at a Bolivian restaurant; Dave and I had steak, which came with rice in a cheesy sauce and some vegetables. For pudding I had what I assumed was a sort of creme caramel, and it was - in fact it was very similar to the sort I'd had a few times in Brazil.