El gran viaje 2007

Well the truth is, Sergio and I have been in Bolivia for about a week and we haven´t done much of anything.

We finally got everything together-- train tickets, visa questions-- and crossed the border to Bolvia on Tuesday (no visa needed, after all). We went straight to the train station and started the trip to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia´s biggest city and the capital of the eastern part of the country. We were staying at a nice place in Santa Cruz, and the relatively exciting pace of a decent-sized city was a relief after being stuck in Corumbá. We ended up staying in Santa Cruz until Sunday, despite the fact that there´s not much exciting there for tourists. We just enjoyed relaxing in a comfortable hostel, eating good food, and wandering around the city.

We did finally check out and head for our next destination, though, and we´re now in Sucre. Sucre is Bolivia´s former capital (in fact, as a kid at Oyster we always learned that the capital of Bolivia was both La Paz and Sucre, although it seems to be 100% La Paz now), and our first destination in the Andes mountains where we´ll be until we head back to sea level in Perú. The journey here was probably one of our more adventurous. The bus we took was nothing nice-- it didn´t even have a bathroom-- and seemed to pack an unbelievable number of seats into the tiny space. In fact, I guess they don´t require kids to purchase a seat at all, because there were little kids sleeping in the aisle next to their parents. Anyway, eventually we made it through the 16 hour ride on a dirt road up into the mountains in one piece.

We spent yesterday, our first day in Sucre, trying to take it easy and let ourselves get used to the altitude. Just a walk around the main central plaza left us breathless, but today we´re doing much better. We are thoroughly enjoying how cheap Bolivia is... our hotel room here in Sucre, which is pretty classy (for us) with it´s own bathroom, clean towels, and HBO, is only costing us about $12 per night, and lunch yesterday at a place with white tablecloths was about $6 for both of us. We´re living like kings after Brazil, which isn´t much cheaper than home and had us staying in the cheapest places we could find, however gross the bathroom.

We plan to stay in Sucre for a few more relaxing days before heading up to Potosí and then the salt flats in Uyuni.