Santa Cruz, Bolivia

Well i guessed it would happen eventually, Nic has handed over the blog to me and i can only apologise now for the grammer and giberish.

So we headed for the bus station in Asuncion and booked the 8pm destined for Santa Cruz, estimated time of arrival, 23 hrs later!!!! For the first few hours, apart from it being freezing, it was fairly uneventfull. Then the clock struck midnight and so began the never ending police checks, passport stamps and terrible roads. At first it was quite fun, however as the night wore on, and the cold got worse it slowly started to get boring. In hind sight it was great, however at the time i could put a few more choice words to describe the feeling.

When we finally began to arrive in Santa Cruz it was apparent that this was a very different kind of city to anything we had experienced before. The roads were packed, the heat was sticky and when we pulled into the bus station, well put it this way we had been spoiled with luxury in the previous countrys. Getting off the bus was manic and it felt like there was thousands of people waiting both in the station and outside. Of course common sense would have said that we would have some local currency with us, however this time( and lesson learned ) we didn´t and this made trying to get a cab a little difficult. After a very broken spanish/English conversation with a taxi driver we were on our way to the hostel we had seen on the internet. I say on our way, however as the taxi driver had no idea where it was, it took some time.

So we arrive at Jodenga hostel and after approaching the reception, realised that we would have to experience our first time in a dorm. Dun dun duuun. The first night was ok, after having a shower we went for some drinks in downtown Santa Cruz with some of the other guys in the hostel. As we didn´t have any Bolivianos the night was short but lots of fun.

After a good nights sleep, we headed off around the city and what a difference from our initial thoughts after arriving. The city is lovely and the people are very friendly. On top of that we went for the biggest knickerbocker glory ever in one of the many ice cream parlours. That night the hostel had the offer of an all you can eat and drink BBQ for only 70 Bolivianos pp ( just over a tenner ). Of course it would have been stupid to pass this up and both Nic and i joined in with gusto.... After drinking them almost dry and eating our own body weight in meat ( there was others by the way) we headed back into town for some more drinks with our new found hostel chums. Now i swear we only had two half shandys each, however the next day i felt terrible. After dragging ourselves out of bed, we headed for the plaza in the centre of town to walk up the bell tower of the cathedral, and it was beautiful. To add to that we were there at the top when the bells started ringing, it was very easy to get caught up in the moment!

So having stayed at Jodanga for 3 nights, it was time to move onto our next adventure. We had got along well with a couple from New Zealand, Richard and Rebecca, and decided to travel onto Sucre together. Now there was two options, a half an hour flight costing 300 Bolivianos pp or a bus trip lasting 19 hours and only costing 100 Bolivianos pp.

Bus it was.......