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Published: July 15th 2006
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As you may have noticed I've been a bit busy exploring the sites to update my blog recently...sure you all understand being busy with life relocating to new lands and jobs then there are those of you with young ones, exisitng wonder, just arrived and to come in the near future! Congrats to all the new additions to our many friends families - enjoy the young curious people and characters they are!
After our adventure in the forest we took a day off to write, rest and see a bit more of Santa Cruz. Planning to visit the nearest of the Jesuit missions: San Javier and Concepcion. An other day trip! we bought our tickets at the bus station and got on board for our journey to San Javier. Pretty much the whole day went off without a hitch,
somewhat, more on that later.
The village town of San Javier was very quiet not many folk around spotted a few foriegn looking peeps about but mainly just locals. We went on a guided tour of San Javier to learn a bit of it's history. How the Jesuits settled here in 1691 and approximately two missionaries per village speaking
saints
one solid piece of wood native languages (while forbidding the speaking of Spanish to preserve the ´purity´ of the locals) converted a majority of the indigineous population, quite extraordinary, really. They were clever enough to utilize imagery, music and dance all pre-existing practices in the culture. The Jesuits also developed a communal way of life where all the harvest, everything, all produce was handed over to the church then the church in turn would redistribute rations to every resident - elderly, young and all in between - no one was uncared for.
The paintings are a baroque mestizo style essentially the missionaries brought their skills and taught the people how to paint and inreturn the local blended what they were familiar with into what is sean all around the church - within the church you won't see the station of the cross displayed as it was too gory and may frighten the soon to be converted instead you see painted images that tell the tale.
We opted for lunch at a local eatry not that we had much choice to select from then returned to finish our guided tour of the museo. There was a photo expose and lots of musical instruments and
models of saints from colonial times - overall, great museum, recommend the guide and maybe getting a book on the history of the Jesuit Missions. Originally, there were ten, today only seven remain and of those - six are UNESCO world heritage sites... we also visited a huge rock site near by that was a place of worship for the pre-Columbian natives, being the highest place next to town before catching the bus to Concepcion.
Catching our local bus was pretty easy but we had a very stirct time limit and we visited the church briefly, then went over to the museum where we really ran short of time and had to make a dash for the bus back to San Javier otherwise we may not return to Santa Cruz on the same night.
Finally our bus arrived and it was pretty full, we were both tired from all the running around and seeing the sites. We hit a curvey windy bit of road when next thing we know a woman sitting across from us screams and her husband jumps up and as we are speeding along demanding that the bus stop! We were like
what's happening? and
I over hear the woman say somthing about a tooth to the lady behind her.
I tell Sean what's happening and we get our flashlight out to see if they need the light. By the time I get off the bus and ask the crew if they need it they couple are way down the road to the curvy bit. So I was elected to be the one to go down as I can better communicate with them than Sean. They had covered a lot of territory by the time I spotted them ten minutes later their flashlight looked like a candle light compared with our very bright illuminating torch (thanks Marcus E.! - very handy indeed)
The woman was practically in tears, saying she'd have to go to the dentist the whole time talking with me through her daughters baby blanket! Turns out she was car sick and threw-up her upper dentures out the window, seriously!
We kept looking and I assured her that the bus couldn't leave without us, at least that's what I was hoping, when a few minutes later we hear Sean call out from the silent darkness of the night asking where
we where? Calling back I said we'd be back in a few minutes, not really, handed the lady our bright light and began running back to the bus. It was an incline up hill for the distance so by the time I reached Sean I was out of breath and sticky from running in the high humidity, yuck. Once on the bus I downed like a half liter of water.
Thankfully, the good deed paid off and the woman found her teeth, popped them back in and was very happy to get back on the road knowing she wouldn't need to visit a
DENTIST.
Giving the remainder of our water to the couple noticing they weren't drinking anything but both like me were very much out of breath and hot ... they continued on to Santa Cruz while we jumped off in San Javier.
Grateful to be back on time we waited and should have guessed the bus would have been late in arriving. We hung out at the office and chatted with the locals all very friendly, grabbed a bite to eat off one of the street vendors, who was BBQing steak on the grill near
by - hot and tastey.
We hit a back log of traffic, which was unexpected, as it turns out the bridge we crossed earlier in the day unbeknownst to us was actually a railway crossing the actual bridge was still being built by the CALTrans counter part in Bolivia about a quarter of a mile away from the bridge.
Gotta love road works we made it back about one in the morning dead tired but with smiles on our faces. Only in Bolivia...
We ended up staying an extra night in Santa Cruz unwillingly because our laundry that we gave to the hotel on Monday morning wasn't ready and this was Wednesday when we wanted to take the train South - no go! Ended up taking a very long journey on a bus to Sucre the white city and not the train to the Bolivian wine country South near Tupiza.
Bolivia's white city the next chapter in our South American Adventure!
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