Santa Cruz to the Border 9/28/12 - 10/1/12

The vast majority, okay 95%, of Bolivia's roads are unpaved, and the long winding road through the mountains to Santa Cruz was definitely unpaved.  Picture this.... a 17 hour journey on a dusty, rocky road and no a/c on the bus so the windows were open, no bathroom on board so the bus stopped every 5 or so hours (including at 4 am) for a bathroom break; however, for two of those breaks that meant getting off the bus in the pitch black and popping a squat (ladies, men, elderly, children, everyone!) with the rest of the bus.  Safe to say, it was one of our less favored bus trips. 

We originally planned to do some type of Amazon wetlands tour from Santa Cruz rather than go all the way back north to La Paz to do it; however, as it turned out there wasn't a plethora of tours leaving from here and with the price and type of tours, we weren't overly hyped about it.  So, no Amazon tour for us.  Thus, this city was a mere 3 day/2 night stop over to get to Brazil.  More relaxation :-).

The town was decent and had a very nice plaza with plenty of shops, restaurants, and ice cream shops around it.  We definitely had our share of ice cream while there (the Oreo was awesome!), as well as treated ourselves to a great steak dinner while it was cheap.

We stayed at Residencial Bolivar where a private room with shared bath was about $12 a piece and included a fruit, bread, and juice breakfast.  

It also had a Toucan mascot who we called Sam (thanks major corporation marketing of sugary Froot Loops cereal while we were children!).  He was very friendly and liked to hang out with the humans.

We also planned our trip to get the Brazil border via train so we headed to the bus terminal/train station to get our tickets on one of the better, faster trains, Ferrobus.  We went to the station on Saturday, but the ticket booth was closed.  We asked a lady at the info. center if she knew if there were any seats on the train left because we had heard the seats on the nice train can sell out days in advance.  She said there were still some first class seats left (oh darn ;-) ).  The ticket booth didn't open again until 3 PM the next day (the day we wanted to take the train), so Kristin made sure we were there by 1:45 so that we'd be the first in line.  As it turned out, 3:00 turned into 3:40 ish, but after 2 hours of waiting in line (with only 1 other person) we were able to get our tickets on the train we wanted with no problem!

The train was nicer than the majority of the buses we have ridden (there was a/c and the seats were very comfy) and the meal was even great!  We left about 6:30 in the evening and arrived at the border a little over 13 hours later.  We actually felt quite good about exiting Bolivia and were ready for a change of scenery.