Tropical Summer

Trip Start Dec 06, 2005

Trip End Jun 17, 2006

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Flag of Bolivia Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Monday, January 23, 2006

Got off the plane and it was like "hello summer". Finally some tropical weather. A gorgeous 35-odd degrees and we were loving Santa Cruz already. Found a hostel with two resident toucans! And some hammocks for quality lounging around. Al, Charlie and I decided almost immediately that we needed a break and were just going to chill and party in this town until we had to go to Brazil (5 days away). Found an "Irish Pub" with nothing really Irish about it at all, not even any irish beer :( But nice cold bolivian beers went down a treat. Another interesting thing was that the Irish Pub is generally full of south americans, rather than foreigners. Has a fantastic view over the leafy main plaza, and two CDs on repeat playing classic english language hits like Hotel California. Had fantastic steaks for dinner at a 'parrilla' with another Aussie from the hostel, Simon.

Took it really easy the next day, didn't do much at all

01 Resident Hostel Toucan

. Friday night, went out to the nightlife district, totally blown away. Cool young vibe, a tiny bit of Chapel Street, but much more relaxed. Plenty of beautiful girls, according to one of my chilean cousins the most beautiful in south america! Hopped from bar to club to bar, etc. We lost Al halfway through the night and he went hard with two completely insane british guys, slept in till 4:30pm.

Next day our german friend Julia rocked up, went and had a traditional soup (made with peanuts), went swimming at a random acquaintance's 5 star hotel pool, back to Irish Pub, and went out to the clubs again. Raining heavily though, difficult to get into places becuase we were a very male group. Julia punched a security guy for being an asshole to us, it was quite hilarious. Anyway we got into a few places finally, found those british guys and suffice to say ended up with big hangover next day. After that subsided, randomly went Go-Karting, plenty of fun, not exactly something unique to Santa Cruz or south america, but what the hell.

On our last day we went pedal boating on a manmade lake, which turned out to be great due to random local kids jumping up on our boats, diving off, posing for photos, some of them stark naked, having the time of their lives. Best part was that they were totally just having fun, didn't want money for photos or anything like that, weren't gonna try and take our stuff, really good natured, fun loving kids.

Farewelled big Al - he's headed to Rio for a week, - and Julia (headed to Paraguay) and Charlie and I caught the "Death Train" over the border to brazil. Not a very death defying experience at all. Air conditioned, not really bumpy, comfy seats, i think the death train name was given quite a few decades ago and is totally irrelevant now.