Back in Bolivia: Cheap But Freezing ...

Having survived the Death Train, we arrived in Santa Cruz surprisingly relaxed and well rested. But there was no time to lose! Originally we'd given ourselves three weeks in Bolivia which sounded like easily enough time to explore such a small country. We then read about it ... and decided to we had to spend longer here. To make room for this, we are now not going to Ecuador - that's another country off the list then. We now plan to spend just under a month in Bolivia total (1 week previously in April and 3 weeks now) but even that seems like a rush. So, we busily set about doing all the stuff we had planned for Santa Cruz, hoping to get a bus on to Sucre the following evening.

First port of call was Aqualand - Bolivia's only waterpark. Unfortunately, on the day we arrived, it was absolutely freezing. According to our guidebook, Santa Cruz is meant to have a "wonderful tropical climate". Tropical presumably by Bolivian standards, as the temperature and weather resembled England in November. Aqualand was quickly crossed off the list.

This gave us a lot more time to wander around the streets, go to the zoo, and eat a full on Japanese meal, complete with sushi, teryaki chicken, breaded pork, salad, steamed dumplings and two rounds of miso soup, for the same price as a meal from a burger van in Brazil. You know you're back in Bolivia when you can live very comfortably for 10 GBP a day. I love it!

As we had a lot of church visits and cultural stuff lined up for us in the next week, we then decided to hit the Santa Cruz mall to watch the new Indiana Jones Film and binge on frozen yogurt.

All that was left for us to do then, was to check out the local markets, buy some incredibly cheap and tasty mandarins (5 for less than 10p!), take pictures of the main square (main pic above), and buy an extremely tasteful "tiger" blanket to keep us warm on those chilly Bolivian nights. Picture to come soon.

Armed with our blanket we then caught the night bus to Sucre, which despite being just 300km away as the crow flies, was scheduled to take 15 hours. Hmmm ...