January 9, 2017 - Botanical Gardens and Cotoca
A beautiful walk through one of the most beautiful parks in Bolivia, and a visit to an old, traditional town. This is a memory of one of my early excursions.
I had been wanting to go to the Botanical Garden
and Cotoca since I arrived in Bolivia last July. Debbie and Carlos took me the summer before,
but it was a rainy day. For July 2016, I
wanted to return, but it was always cancelled by bad weather or other
plans. Then one day, I woke up to a
gorgeous, sunny day, and I had no other plans.
So I called a day of exploration.
Cotoca is about 20 minutes away if there is
no traffic. That is fairly close, but
with traffic, and there is always traffic in Santa Cruz, it takes a bit
longer. I don’t think people take taxis
there very often. They either take the
bus or a trufi, which is a taxi that fills up with as many people as possible.
I took a taxi and luckily had an honest guy.
He seemed excited to give me a tour of little nothings, but it is those
nothings that begin to make you feel at home.
He also told me to not pay more than 10 Bs. if I decided to go on to
Cotoca from the Botanical Garden. Good
advice.
When I went here in July of 2015 it was wet. On this day, it was dry. Many trees lacked leaves, but that gives me a
desire to return in a few months as spring begins. There was a wedding party taking pictures and
teenagers snapping selfies with friends.
Those two things seem to be everywhere in the world nowadays. But most of the time I could walk through the
gardens and listen to birds singing.
There were two beautiful blackbirds with yellow tails. Not much was blooming other than
bougainvillea and some yellow trees.
I’ll be back.
From the Botanical Garden, I wasn’t sure how
to get to Cotoca, but it was a day of adventure, so that means figure it out as
I go. That is the way to learn how
things work and who knows, you might just meat a new friend. I went to the highway. Except for trucks, nothing seemed to be on
the road, so I was quickly discouraged that I would find a taxi. I tell myself not to worry so much, because God
always seems to work it out. Not two
minutes on the road a car sees me in the distance and flashes its lights, a
sign it is a taxi asking if I want a ride.
I waved him down and was quickly off to Cotoca – literally less than a
two-minute wait. Proof to me that God
takes care. There were three other
passengers in the car, four if you count a baby, and when I gave the driver a
10, he gave me 5 back. Five bolivianos
is a little less than $1.
I was hungry, so the first thing I did it
look for food. There was a little
restaurant on the corner of the plaza and the chicken smelled good. I said I’d like some chicken and a coke. I guess I did not know what the old guy
running the restaurant said to me, because the next thing I knew I had a plate
with literally half a chicken, another full plate of rice, and a third plate of
noodles and French fries. Wow! The whole time I was eating, knowing I won’t
finish half, I was wondering what I would do.
This isn’t the USA where a lot of food is wasted and I didn’t want to
carry a doggie bag with me either. But I
decided I would pack it up anyway. There
are always beggars on the street, so I found a lady who held her hand out for a
coin; I gave her chicken instead. She
beamed at me. It felt good especially
when her little girl came running over to eat.
Now my hands were free and I could explore
Cotoca. The first thing I noticed was
all the sloths in the Plaza seemed to be running away. Twice I saw one trying to escape and twice a
man picked them up and brought them back to the trees in the Plaza. They let out a little squeal that sounds
almost like a laugh when they are picked up.
I was thinking they might be looking for food since the trees were so
bare. One of the men who picked one up
told me there are six in the Plaza. I
only counted three.
Cotoca is a town that can be traced back to
the late 1700s. It still retains its
colonial charm with the Sanctuary of the Virgen of Cotoca (the Virgin
Mary). There is not much else to see
there, except the Plaza. I decided to go
off the main road and look around some side streets. It felt a lot like the Santa Cruz I knew in
the 80s, at least in part. Even in the
80s Santa Cruz was a large city. Cotoca
is small. Step a block away from the
Plaza and it is quiet. Life is simpler
and less complicated. If you see people,
they smile at you. An old man waved at
me as I passed. It is life the way it
should be.
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