Tucan Sam

Trip Start Jan 23, 2006
1
21
28
Trip End Jan 31, 2007


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of Bolivia  ,
Monday, April 3, 2006

The bus of pain took us from the Brazilian border to the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. It took 5 hours longer than advertised, mostly because in the middle of the night 2 trucks got stuck in the muddy road. We had to take a back road detour- I thought we were already on a back road, but I was wrong, this was worse!

We arrived, bruised and battered in Santa Cruz. Asti had pharyngitis , and Ali and I had the beginnings of it. Our plans to move quick through Bolivia were foiled, and we laid low to recover in Santa Cruz for 3 days. The hostel had 2 tame toucans, which we spent hours observing and photographing. Santa Cruz was a really nice chilled out town. We had not heard many good things about it, but perhaps expectation management is important after all. Strikes are the in thing in Bolivia, it is a few days off to booze and lay around in the streets! We just happened to catch a bus strike when trying to leave Santa Cruz! All busses were cancelled, except one to Cochabamba. Being super keen to leave Santa Cruz, and super ignorant on strikes in Bolivia we decided to take this bus. All was going well, until an hour before Cochabamba, when we hit a road block. The strikers had taken the high ground above the road, and dislodged rocks onto the road. They also had piles of stones ready to throw at any busses or cars trying to make it past the road block. Eventually they let us go, to great joy and happiness. Sadly we found another road block about 5km's down the road. Here taxis, cars and busses were parked across the road. Our driver, full of good news, informed us that we might be able to pass the road block at about 5pm. Seeing as it was 8am we were in for a long wait. Wait we did...
At about 5pm the taxis pulled away and our driver tried to bolt through the road block. Unfortunately one rather inebriated striker nearly didn't get out of the way of our charging bus, suddenly the attention of the strikers was on our bus and bus driver. We had rocks thrown at the bus, and the windows smashed in. Our driver, nit wanting to stick around and see what went down hot tailed it out of the bus and into the corn fields! Quite an ordeal! We finally made it into Cochabamba, went straight to a hostel and counted our lucky stars that we were all OK. Not wanting to face any more bus strikes we flew to La Paz from Cochabamba.
Slideshow Print this entry Santa Cruz hotels