The almost three weeks we spent in Santa Cruz flew by before our very eyes. We arrived late on a wet Wednesday night and by Friday our new friend Alejandro had helped us tick everything off the vehicle to do list. On day one we were dropped off in town while our brand new radiator was being fitted at half the price we had been quoted in Santiago. That afternoon with our beaten up old radiator finally where it belonged in the scrap heap, we drove to the local oil changers for an oil change obviously. How amazing it is not to have to worry about the radiator anymore, now we can eat the eggs we buy rather than putting them in the radiator. The next day we had our spot lights re-wired so that the fuse now lasts more than one hour without blowing. In the afternoon Will also found a guy who would build us a nice new steel bash plate starting the following morning which was a Saturday.
So I got to spend my Saturday morning sleeping in, in our gigantic super king bed while Will was up at first light to help build the new bash plate. At this stage I was getting pretty worried that we would have to leave soon given the Dodge was almost done, instead we had an idea.... Spanish lessons! So I spent my balmy Saturday afternoon googling Spanish teachers while Will did an amazing job of making our new bash plate. Pickings for Spanish teachers were slim especially given the short notice as we wanted to start on Monday, so I turned to couch surfing for help. I was inundated with offers and we meet one lady but she turned out to be a little to much for us and in the end we opted for a traditional classroom setting at www.1on1spanishaymara.org with teacher Hugo.
On Saturday evening we were invited to a BBQ at Alejandro's house where in the pouring rain we meet Alejandro's family. We ate until we could eat no more and drank until we could not drive home, so we spent the night in their guest house. The next morning over breakfast we were invited to a lunch time BBQ that afternoon. This time they had a guitarist and even more family. The men had plenty of jokes to tell the table but unfortunately we couldn't yet understand them. Afterwards Alejandro's step daughter Cindy took us out for a cup of tea with her friend to try many of Santa Cruz's famous pastries, very tasty!
On Monday we had just a short Spanish class as our teacher had another student to pick up from the airport. So we took the opportunity to get the car blinged with some trip sign writing. Being in Bolivia it took all afternoon and a few things aren't quite straight but now everybody can tell where we are from with New Zealand on the back in both Spanish and English complete with a silver fern, a map of the Americas and our webpage address.
Every day for the next week on our way to class I feared for my life as we drove across town through absolutely nasty traffic and flooded streets to our school. But overall we had a brilliant week with only one other student Denali from Israel. Each day a traditional Bolivian lunch of soup and a plate of rice and meat was brought to us at the school. We even went to a salsa dancing class and also to a local ladies house where we were taught how to cook pastries! We made mouth watering delights such as cheese empanadas, sweet bread and cunapes made from yucca flour. We certainly enjoyed eating them and had some success trying to make them ourselves at the apartment later. We learnt a lot at the spanish school but now it's a matter of putting in some study to memorise the words. We didn't end up having too much time to study with all the fun we were having.
Our lack of study wasn't helped when on Thursday morning the Dodge plain would not start despite the battery having full charge and gas in the tank. Late for class we caught a taxi and continued doing so until our classes finished on Saturday as we could not find the problem. Sunday was spent finally relaxing at home, though we did go out with Alejandro's family for lunch and a traditional Tarijan costume dance show. We spent the rest of the day catching up on some Internet time and making a real oven cooked dinner with ANZAC biscuits and apple crumble for desert. We could make all this finally because of the fantastic supermarket just down the road called IC Norte, unlike other supermarkets in Bolivia it stocked almost everything we have in NZ. We went there basically everyday making the most of the fresh veg, real yoghurt and more canapés!
On Monday it was time to get the Dodge going we really needed to get back on the road. Kindly Alejandro's step son Diego brought a mechanic with a diagnostic computer to the apartment. He discovered it wasn't the alarm as we had thought instead it was the starter motor. It was going to be fixed by 11am the next day but at 2pm when we arrived the mechanic was at lunch so I put Will to work to put our new bash plate back on.
Excited to finally be ready to leave Will starts the car and immediately we realise not a single gauge on the dash is working. The mechanic goes all 'it wasn't me' but plugs the diagnostic computer back in for a look. With nothing coming up on the computer we realise this is now beyond our mechanics capabilities and leave.
Excited to finally be ready to leave Will starts the car and immediately we realise not a single gauge on the dash is working. The mechanic goes all 'it wasn't me' but plugs the diagnostic computer back in for a look. With nothing coming up on the computer we realise this is now beyond our mechanics capabilities and leave.
That night we learnt that Alejandro's daughter and boyfriend will be arriving on Wednesday and there will be another BBQ for us to attend. Why not stay a few more days and try and get the gauges sorted we decided. I had been feeling pretty unwell so stayed in bed while poor Will set off to find someone to diagnose the problem with the gauges. Eventually he finds a Dodge service centre but the news is not good they can't fix it, in fact they don't really seem to know what the problem is just something in the dash computer. They said we need a whole new dash board $500USD here but after a quick ebay search we discovered them for only $30USD in the states. In the end we decided to look at getting one shipped to us later and drove out to Alejandro's for our final BBQ. At Alejandros we meet his daughter and her boyfriend as well as the rest of the family again and ate another delicious meal from the grill. We did talk about going out on the town the following night but I was still felling pretty sick so on our final morning in Santa Cruz we headed out to Alejandro's to say good bye to this amazing family who had taken us in as their own, making us feel so very welcome and helping us without relent... we will always be grateful to them.
We couldn't leave just yet though we had one last thing to do and that was to head out to our Spanish school again as Hugo had arranged a local reporter to come and interview us for the national newspaper! We featured the next day and brought ourselves a copy in the next town having finally left Santa Cruz.
Rochelle & Will
PS: You may have noticed in the photos from this blog that Wills berad was reaching new levels of wildness and I was increasingly put off my this new look lets hope it's gone by the next blog....
Rochelle & Will
PS: You may have noticed in the photos from this blog that Wills berad was reaching new levels of wildness and I was increasingly put off my this new look lets hope it's gone by the next blog....