Santa Cruz surprise (Drive Day 191: Jan 6, 2004)
This city was an outpost when I saw it last. But modern Santa Cruz slides by my window in a stream of diesel exhaust and sagging telephone lines. I can’t keep up with the hustle but I’m clearly not the only one.
For travelers, this is the Houston of Bolivia – oil the latest of its natural riches.
I find the woman’s house whose backyard we camped in thirty years ago. But it feels like the past is crumbling under progress and I’m wishing there was a signature drink to go with this Wild East city.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
