Santa Cruz, Bolivia - April 1995

[click any picture to enlarge]

Most people visit Bolivia to go to La Paz, Lake Titicaca and other remote Andean places that I can't find on the map. I went to the eastern Andes to visit an acquaintance I made ten years prior in Australia. This page shows a few scenes and describes some conditions in and about Santa Cruz. The first picture to the right is a view of my friend's home in what you would perhaps call semi-suburban Santa Cruz.

The home is reasonably up-to-date as we might expect in Southern California, with a couple exceptions, it's on a mud street, and surrounded by the fortress like, high concrete block wall with a very heavy secure gate. One nearly needs a 4X4 vehicle to drive some of the streets in the rainy season - and it rains a lot. All of the middle class or above homes in Santa Cruz are totally enclosed in the high security wall. guarding your property in less developed countries is a constant concern, perhaps because it's harder to get it back if you do loose it. For example when people are traveling for an extended period there is real possibility that someone else will just "move in" to their home, pay off the correct authorities, and the owner may never get it back.

Each morning as Reinhard began his work day I observed two large bulges, one each of his front pants pockets. One was his cell phone, they were much larger then than now, which seemed to be an integral part of his doing business. The other bulge, maybe an inch to inch and a half thick, was a large quantity of money - American money. It's a cash economy and a business man may need a lot. A $20 bill with a corner torn off is not accepted as payment. My friend claimed the banker would always slip a couple such damaged bills in his count when he got money from the bank. he traded a couple of these to me for good ones that I happened to have.

Luly and I went out for a tour of the city and the market area - El Mercado. The city streets are laid out in about four concentric rings. So you get on one of the rings, zip around the city close to your final destination, then split out - just like the beltway in Washington DC.

As in most under developed countries there are many amusing sights. This seems to be a couple transporting their produce to market.

In the central city square, surrounded by many small shops, a couple catholic churches, and some government buildings there is a tree-filled park. A number sloths - these are the animals that move at about one step per minute -were slothing about in the trees. One is pictured here moving at about normal speed.

My friend Reinhard did mineral survey work in the oil fields of much of South America for ten years or so. However, at this time he had begun a grain silo enterprise a few miles to the east of Santa Cruz. Pictured here is the silo complex. these are akin to our mid-western grain elevators. The grain is generally soy beans or corn. Of course they can't be mixed, so at the beginning of the season a decision must be made regarding which grain to handle in a particular silo. Reinhard was processing soy beans this year.

As the grain is harvested it is trucked to complexes like these and sold by the farmers to the silo operators. The silo operator dries and cleans the product, and stores, hoping for the optimum marketing time. It must of course be sold by the next season to make room for new harvest. When the harvest begins, things get busy. While I was visiting sometimes 50 tractor-trailer rigs loaded with grain were lined up at Reinhard's silos. Most came from the eastern low lands and more from Brasil, just across the boarder. The business society operated strictly on cash, so a lot had to be available. Each trailer of grain requires about $2000 cash as I recall. There is virtually no credit system in place, probably because there is no legal system in place to seek redress when the debtors don't pay.

In this picture the brown structure to the left is the drying kiln. It contains a very large fire box fuel with wood. The undried grain is temporarily cycled using conveyors etc. through the small silo in the center and the drying areas in the kiln until adequately dried. then it is stored in the large silos. A supervisor and a couple workers must operate the complex day and night, as trucks arrive constantly in season and the drying must proceed immediately. It is also interesting that Reinhard has built his own large scale to weigh loaded trucks, using pressure transducers and electronics.

In the upper picture the rectangular red brick building to the right is a new seed cleaning, processing, and storage area, still under construction at the time of the picture. Reinhard obtained the bricks from a colony of Chinese just down the road about half mile in a field. Visiting the 'brick factory," appearances were that the Chinese group had come to that location and simply started a business on the land - digging the clay, building wood-fired kilns with their very own bricks and selling them. Everyone working there, lived there and no one else.

On one occasion we made an excursion west of town to and old town, whose name I have forgotten, that pre-dates Santa Cruz and to some of the surrounding jungle. This picture is one residence in this area. Notice shelter from the rain and a skylight too. You should have seen the fresh meat in the wheelbarrow. The stove is in the right-center of the picture.

Below we have a middle class home in an area close by.