Return to the Land of Dreadful Buses, Santa Cruz, Bolivia - June 2011

We took a 24 hour bus from Asuncion to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. This turned out to be one of the most uncomfortable rides to date. The bus was old, dirty and not very comfortable (although at least it had a toilet) and a bit of a chicken bus stopping all the time for people to get on and off, with luggage which seemed like it should have been in the hold.
We thought driving through the Chaco in Paraguay would be interesting, but along the roadside, there is not much to see but what looks like scrub land. We left Paraguay at 4am, after aimlessly wandering around border control for 10 minutes, before someone from the bus told us we had to go around the fence and down the dirt track...'Of course it's there and not in the office before us we thought!' A wild boar was there to greet us too and tried to get on the bus - he seemed quite tame.
The Bolivian border control came about 3 hours after and was a shack in the middle of nowhere on a sand road. Much of the way to Santa Cruz was on sand and dirt roads, so quite bumpy, but fun in some places.
Santa Cruz was a very pleasant town. Very different to what we had seen of Bolivia so far, it could have been a different country. There were not many indigenous people around, which made it feel like many other South American countries. Everything seemed much cleaner and smarter and there was certainly more development. The town still retained a charm in around the main plaza though, with beautiful colonial buildings, carefully restored. One day was enough to see everything though.
We decided we could not face a 24 hour bus ride to La Paz though and treated ourselves to an internal flight with TAM for the princely sum of £54.

The Bolivian side of the Paraguayan-Bolivian border crossing.
This was a typical 'main' road in Bolivia.

The restaurant where we lunched twice in Santa Cruz. A gorgeous old colonial building. They had a delicious set menu which cost about £1.50, although the lemonade tasted of lavender.

The main plaza, Santa Cruz.