Bolivia's tropical powerhouse — carnival queens, majao rice and Chiquitania music
Santa Cruz de la Sierra is a Bolivia most travellers never see — a tropical lowland city of 2 million people that has grown faster than any other South American city since the 1960s. Unlike La Paz's altitude and Andean austerity, Santa Cruz is hot, flat and prosperous, fuelled by natural gas revenues and a Camba culture that values food, music and the weekly promenade around the Plaza 24 de Septiembre. The cuisine — majao (dried beef with rice and egg), locro (corn soup), and cuñapé cheese bread — is entirely distinct from highland Bolivia, and the Carnival here is the best in the country aft…
Santa Cruz was founded in 1561 by Ñuflo de Chávez in the lowlands east of the Andes — far from the silver wealth of Potosí and the Incan empire's sphere, developing its own frontier Camba identity over centuries. The city stagnated for 400 years as a forgotten colonial backwater before Bolivia's oil and gas discoveries in the 1970s transformed it almost overnight into the country's economic engine. The surrounding Chiquitania region contains six UNESCO-listed Jesuit mission churches built in the 17th–18th century — unique Baroque architecture created by Jesuit priests and indigenous Chiquitan…