February 1, 2017
A Walk Around the First Ring
One of my dear friends back home, Elaine, had to know exactly where I was living. So she got on her phone and looked at a map of the city. When we were together a few days before I flew to Bolivia, she was asking me about the city and noticed it has rings surrounding it. She wanted to know more!
The really old Santa Cruz is within the
First Ring (Primer Anillo), that is the road that goes around the old
city. It is nearly round, so a ring
makes sense. Inside the First Ring are
buildings and streets that look a hundred years old. Some of the buildings really are that old, or
older. The city is trying to preserve
the colonial feel of the old city because Santa Cruz is one of the fastest
growing cities in the world. If they are
not careful, it will disappear in modernization.
As the city grew, they built more concentric
rings around the city, each about evenly spaced from the others. Important roads cut through them and helped
to connect the city. When I was here in
the 80s the Third Ring was built up and in some places the Fourth. Now we are talking Seventh and Eighth Rings,
and along several of the major highways, even to fifteen and beyond. But the rings help you understand where you
are and where you are going. You could
kind of describe it like a big spider web.
If you learn the system, you will discover that it is hard to get really
lost in Santa Cruz.
When I lived here in the 80s and was in my late
20s, I walked a lot. Except for my last
year that I was here, I always lived within the First Ring. Often, I would walk the First Ring at
night. That took about an hour and a
half. No wonder I was a lot skinnier
back then! I have been walking a lot
since I returned. When I am feeling
really tired around 6:00 and am thinking of bed, I get up and go for a
walk. Then I feel better and sleep
better.
I have wanted to do a walk around the First
Ring again, but wasn’t sure at night was as safe as when I was a kid. So one morning in early August of 2016, I got
up early and went for a walk around the First Ring.
There are many beautiful statues in the middle of the rotundas. I stopped at the cemetery, one of the quietest places in town. There is a plane that is an actual plane forced to crash land in Santa Cruz and now has its own park. The trees were in bloom. The walk took me about three hours, double what I did in the 80s, but that is most likely because I stopped often to take pictures. My feet were so tired.
When I return to Bolivia in a few weeks, I am thinking it might be a good weekly event to walk that Ring.
This was a repost from August of 2016. I still think it might be a good thing to do at least once a week.
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