Getting up close and personal with a toucan in Santa Cruz

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Early in the morning Jaime drove us to the airport in Sucre - we were headed to the city of Santa Cruz (and nearly back to sea level at only 417 meters) where we planned on catching up with another member of the Argandona family, Rodrigo, before leaving Bolivia enroute for Paraguay and the Iguazu Falls. Unfortunately we found that our flight had been rescheduled and we had a four and half hour wait before departure though we managed to fill the time at the café and online, though the internet signal was very erratic. We had loved our time in the ‘White City’ and really appreciated how well our new ‘family’ had looked after us. The flight to Santa Cruz was brief, a mere 25 minutes, and a taxi took us to a hostel in the centre of the city. Santa Cruz is actually the largest city in Bolivia and there didn’t seem to be much of the lovely old colonial architecture so evident in other towns. In fact most of buildings were fairly modern - the city certainly didn’t have much street appeal - at least to our eyes. The roads were jammed with traffic and eventually our driver dropped us on the edge of the main square. We had received no replies from the couple of hostels we had emailed but thankfully one did have a room available though we weren't able to access it until late that afternoon as it had just been renovated and the staff were still in the process of redecorating it. The hostel had a resident toucan which was definitely the highlight of our time in Santa Cruz for Jerry! A stunning bird, very large - it almost looked like a blow up plastic toy - in fact one of the guests thought it was until it the staff picked it up and bought it across the Jerry.
We spent the afternoon exploring and eating ice-cream whilst we watched the locals enjoying the sun (and feeding the hundreds of pigeons) in the plaza. The plaza was actually lovely - shaded by many trees and lined with some of the only colonial buildings we saw in the city. We wandered the shops, made some final purchases - and bought another bag to put it all in! We only had 6 weeks more of our trip to go and weren’t planning on moving as often during the remaining time so figured we could manage another bag. Next morning the weather was dismal - the cold weather we had experienced in Rurrenabaque in the jungle had come across from Santa Cruz and we were now getting a taste of it again. It appears it is not uncommon here - and is caused by winds from the Argentine pampas - though most of the year the sun shines. The cold windy rain kept us indoors until lunch time when we met Rodrigo for a meal at the Irish Pub. Irish themed pubs seem to have taken over the world - they pop up everywhere! He was a nice young man, a lawyer, helping to fight the illegal logging which was destroying the forest on the border between Bolivia and Paraguay. We made arrangements to have a meal with him the next day before spending a quiet evening in the warmth of our room.
Next day we caught the bus to the zoo and had a very pleasant few hours there. Both of us loved watching the fascinating armadillos - they really are odd looking creatures - though then we discovered the anteater which was even stranger! It was a very well kept site and though neither of us like seeing animals caged the chances of ever seeing armadillos in the wild would be very unlikely. I wasn’t feeling well so spent the afternoon quietly . Jerry met Rodrigo again that evening - which proved a good decision - as they ended up in a noisy smoky bar watching football together. Definitely not my scene at all!
As well as meeting up with Rodrigo we needed to come to Santa Cruz as it had an international airport with connecting flights to Asuncion in Paraguay. When we first planned our trip we thought that we may have driven overland to Asuncion but had decided to fly instead - a wise decision as we had no desire to spend any more time on overnight buses - and that trip would have taken 24 hours! Although we would have liked to have visited the interesting Jesuit Mission churches north of Santa Cruz we were running out of time and were also now locked into plane tickets. We had priced a very long day trip to them at a travel agency recommended by our hostel but at US $150 each we decided that it was far too expensive. We decided to visit some of the ruins in Argentina but knew that they would not be as interesting as the Bolivian ones. However you can't do everything and we've done pretty well....
We were extremely sad to be leaving Bolivia. It had been the highlight of our trip so far and we could now fully understand the attraction Devin feels for the country. The four day trip from Tupiza to Uyuni through the high altitude desert and the salt flats is probably the best four days travelling we've ever experienced. We were however glad to be leaving the higher altitude behind as both of us had difficuties coping with it, particularly breathing issues whilst sleeping. so it was with heavy hearts (and suitcases) we boarded our flight to Asuncion in Paraguay.

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