It took us no less than 44 hours. Like I mentioned in my previous post, our bus from Foz do Iguaçu was scheduled to leave at midnight. After crossing the border into Paraguay we tried to sleep a little before we arrived in Asunción at 6 AM. We tried to catch a bus to Santa Cruz straight away, but were told that the next bus wasn't due to leave until 8 PM. We paid for a hotel close to the bus station and unsuccessfully tried to sleep a little bit, since the bus ride to Santa Cruz would take 24 hours. The hotel wasn't very nice, though, with very questionable sheets, so I didn`t get a lot of rest. By 8 PM we were ready to board the bus and we quickly realized that the busses heading to Bolivia are not the usual, air-conditioned, fully-reclining-seat havens that we have gotten used to in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. This bus was dirty and extremely uncomfortable. There was just no way to get any sleep, which is kind of crucial to your overall well-being when you've been awake for 36 hours and have 24 hours of traveling to go before you reach your next destination. We tried nonetheless, only to be rudely awakened for Paraguayan border formalities at 3 AM. We drove all night and all day. The driver drove very fast on pitch-black gravel roads and a few times I was sure the bus would simply fall onto its side. There was no air conditioning. The bathroom was basically a loose bucket on the floor of the back of the bus and guaranteed spilling, what will all that wild driving on gravel roads in the pitch-black darkness. Besides the necessary border formalities, we were not allowed to leave the bus to stretch our legs - not once.
I will always remember that journey as the day that I stopped loving long-distance bus travel. I did some yoga in between it all and tried not to kill anybody. But this is a part of traveling in South America and, in a way, I'm glad that we experienced it. But I'm also really glad that it's over and that I'll never have to do it again.
We arrived in Santa Cruz at night, took a taxi to our hotel and went to bed straight away.
Now, I don't know what image comes to your mind when you think about Bolivia, but mine did absolutely not match the places that we've seen thus far. When you read about Bolivia, things like ''poorest country in South America'' and ''an increase in violent crime against tourists'' jump out to you. One girl I met in Foz do Iguaçu told me that she'd stopped wearing earrings because they were forcefully snatched from girls' ears.
But Santa Cruz was nothing like that. I did some research and it turns out that the eastern part of Bolivia is actually quite wealthy and prosperous. Santa Cruz is the biggest city in Bolivia with 1.54 million inhabitants and is obviously doing quite well. The city is a mix of beautiful colonial architecture and shiny, new malls. Santa Cruz is close to the Amazon Basin and thus lies in the tropics - humidity guaranteed. I read that the people of Santa Cruz consider themselves to be more Brazilian than Bolivian and I can see why.
We only had one day in the city before moving on, which we spent walking around town. At night we spotted a real, live sloth in the palm trees of the central plaza - how amazing!
Perhaps foolishly, though, my favorite part about Santa Cruz was our hotel and the two kittens that lived there. In the short time that we stayed in town we got really close to them and one even brought us a live cockroach to our room one night. Thanks, I guess. It made me realize how much I miss our own cats who, by my mother's description, will probably be unrecognizable to us by now - apparently Bicho weighs a staggering 6.4 kilos!
On Thursday we flew to Tarija in southern Bolivia. I absolutely refused to spend 30 hours on another rickety bus to get there and so we paid a little extra and flew. The great thing about being in the poorest country in South America are the cheap prices - it's like being in South East Asia again! We`ve been spending more money on transport, we're sleeping in ridiculously swanky hotels and eat out 3 times a day without once spending more than our daily budget allows. It's nice. After an hour delay it took us less than 45 minutes to reach Tarija - a warm and sunny city surrounded by beautiful green mountains.
We actually don't have a map of this city. Lonely Planet didn`t print one - probably because no backpackers go out of their way to get here. So we decided to just walk around and see where we would end up - the way backpackers of yore used to do it, one imagines. The Lonely Planet does mention that while Santa Cruz is more Brazilian, Tarija is more Argentinian, and, again, I can see why. The streets have that all-familiar smell of barbecue about them.
This reminds me to tell you about a story of Paraguay. One time we bought some chipa and it turned out that it had minced meat inside. We carefully removed the meat and ate it anyway because we had a 6-hour bus ride ahead of us and hadn't had breakfast yet. Although there was no more meat, it still tasted like minced meat, and guess what? I really didn't like it! Nor did Jochem! The fattiness of the meat was just unbelievably disgusting to me. I like this new development - I knew that I would probably never want to eat meat again, but not once did it cross my mind that when I did eat it, I wouldn't like it. Vegetables all the way!
Back to Tarija, a small town with beautiful plazas and a lot of pastel-colored churches.
My favorite place in Tarija, though, is the Mercado Central. Here you will find your usual mangled animal corpses (reminiscent of Cambodia, if you catch my drift), but also the most beautiful produce section. Hidden in the middle of it all are tiny kitchens with tables and chairs set up next to it, where you pay 2 euros for the most amazing pile of food yet eaten in South America, while being serenaded by a group of local musicians. Some people worry about hygiene in these Bolivian street markets. We haven't been sick once, but, then again, we don't eat the meat that's been lying in the beating sun all day without refrigeration. I loved it - what a treat!
After lunch, by the way, you can head to the bakery section for one of the hundreds of sweet treats on offer!
What I also didn`t know about Bolivia is that it has a fairly successful wine region just outside of Tarija. Today we took a tour to visit 3 wineries, from the very small family-owned to the bigger corporation machines. One thing that they love here is singani - a spirit comparable to grapa. Not exactly my cup of tea, but Jochem liked it. Most wines tend to be on the sweet side, which we didn't like very much, although we did taste an amazing rosé and were allowed to bring the whole bottle back to our hotel! The wine ranks are grown at between 1500 and 2500 meters altitude and thus these are one of the highest wineries in the world.
The scenery in this region was also pretty amazing.
Tomorrow we are traveling to Tupiza by private car. Most busses leave at night and arrive at 4 AM, which is just crazy if you ask me, so we decided to take this route because it means that we leave at 7 AM and arrive at around 1 PM. One of the things that I remember most from The Other Flying Duchman's blog is that staying in Tupiza is nicer than staying in Uyuni. Once in Tupiza we will finally be able to see what everybody wants to see who comes to Bolivia - the biggest salt flat in the world at Salar de Uyuni.
If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!
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