Hotel Canciller Santa Cruz

... entry in last year journey), some olives, sausages, local cheese and a buffet of local dishes based on rice - it was nice but too much, ate nearly 3/4 and gave up. The waiter late rsaid that the table could ahve fed 5. Back to the hostle we met some irish and went out for a couple of drinks and nplayes pool.<br><br>10/10/09 Walking around and preparing to leave<br><br>Organsied the next few day, bought a bus ticket to La Paz for ...

Hello again,<br><br>So I´ve arrived safely to Santa Cruz and at first it was quite surreal. To be back where I lived for almost a year! It felt so similar, yet still so different. The city has changed, it´s growing rapidly and there is much more construction going on than before. But what hasn´t changed, thankfully! is my relationship with my host family! They are just as welcoming and open to me as ...

... was lumpy and rocky. I'm not talking about pebbles. I'm talking about rocks the size of footballs! We tossed back and forth and up and down down the dusty road, stopping for a bathroom break on the side of the road. That reminds me, in Bolivia they don't take you to bathrooms. They take you to fields and streets to urinate. Fortunately, I never had to do anything else besides pee. At around midnight, the ...

After a really interesting train ride through Bolivia's plains to Santa Cruz, made lots of fun by the kids on 'swine flu holiday' selling snacks, we changed for a bus to La Paz. This gave us time to eat some burgers, sit in a lovely square and get ready for the first of Bolivia's notorious buses. It turned out to be really nice and very comfy though. Strange to go to sleep in the jungle and wake up on the Andean plains.

... backpacker found it somewhat humurous the third time. Two times would have just been annoying. <br>- being assured by agencies trying to sell us bus tickets that we could ignore the laws of a nation state and take a shortcut through Paraguay ..... apparently their ´friends´would just stamp our passports on the way through (NZ´ders need a Visa for paraguay, impossible to get in the ...

... find him and give him his money though! Another note about Bolivia, you have to pay the departure tax separate from your airline ticket. And this has to be paid in USD (for everyone I think). It's $19USD to leave Bolivia and Santa Cruz has their own departure tax of $5USD. So it's $24USD per person to leave... It was funny going back to Brasil though. At the immigration control for exiting Bolivia, the official there was the ...

... hear the crunch of it landing again on the tracks. I had to stop looking between the vestibules of the two carriages because it started to make me feel dizzy, one carriage seemed to go one way and the one we were on the opposite. We survived and actually managed a few hours sleep too, we were just so exhausted. The people of Bolivia are far darker and more indigenous and ethnic than their Brazilian neighbours and this is immediately obvious. Bolivia is the ...

... to tell my guide asap that I wanted to climb it as only so many are allowed up each day. Anyway, I kept being reassured that even after the tour I would still have time and their would be tickets. Unfortunately, I suffered the same fate as the kiwis and by the time the tour was over all tickets had been handed out and i missed my chance. A word of warning to anyone reading this that wants to do the climb, IGNORE YOUR GUIDE, FORFEIT THE TOUR (do ...

... go back and have their passport processed - I had been hoping for some sort of drugs bust. At this point, the road disappeared and was replaced by a bumpy sand road, which ran throughout what I can only guess is some sort of no man´s land between Paraguay and Bolivia as it was not until nearly 6.30 - nearly five hours more of continuous driving - that we reached the Bolivian immigration control. This was even more primitive than the Paraguayan exit office and again featured a small ...

... an organisation based and funded out of Austria. Sounds religious? they are but i did not feel ANY religious pressure at all during my stay. <br><br>FAMUNDI is based in Rancho Nuevo, which is about 15 minutes from the centre of Santa Cruz. The foundation is committed to poor families who cannot afford to feed their families, primarliy focusing on single parent families. The foundation is currently committed to 36 families who have 120 children between them ...