Finally some warm weather in Santa Cruz de la Sierra

It’s more motivated than ever that we start our 18 hour bus ride between La Paz and Santa Cruz.

As we leave the terminal, we are all alone on our floor. It looks like this journey is going to be perfect!

But then, after 30 minutes of heavy traffic in La Paz, we get to a second terminal (we had no clue there was another stop in La Paz) and the mess starts! A ton of Bolivians hop on the bus to take all the available seats, and it seems that they decided to travel with absolutely all their belongings! Each comes on board with at least 4 or 5 bags, they even have to leave them in the alley since there isn’t enough room behind each seat… and it stinks! They must be bringing food or something, on top of that they all talk very loudly. Boy this is going to be a long trip…

And it was only the beginning… After a rather eventless night, Matt wakes up with a strong stomach pain. He has to sit on stall of the bus for at least an hour… damn it looks like we will never get rid of this diarrhea!

We finally get to Santa Cruz around noon. Even if Matt isn’t feeling well, we really appreciate the 80°F and the blue sky! We are glad we booked a hostel with a swimming pool.

Matt still not feeling good, Maider goes to visit Santa Cruz alone (we change roles).

A nice main plaza,

with a big colonial style church,

hundreds of pigeons,

and plenty of people playing chess.

Another park with a small lake where people come to meet, play music and feed the pigeons (seems like they really like their pigeons here).

Santa Cruz is a very nice city. We can see right away that the city is richer than La Paz and the rest of Bolivia. The city is clean, the vegetation abundant (big palm trees everywhere), we see only big cars, big houses with high walls… It almost looks like we set foot in California. Santa Cruz is actually the oil and gas capital of Bolivia, and its economical center. The headquarters of all major firms are located here in Santa Cruz, which explains the wealth of the city.

When Maider gets back to the hostel, she finds Matt in a worse shape than when she left. On top of having diarrhea, we also has blood in his stools… So we decided to find a nearby clinic. It had to happen at least once right? In all the blogs we read, the people who travel like us make it at least once to the hospital…

So here we are, heading to the E.R. of a clinic in Santa Cruz. Maider tries to explain at the reception desk what Matt has, it is there that the triage is done. Matt is categorized as high priority, just bellow urgent (mainly because he is white and thus has money… at least we think that’s why). The nurse sees us pretty rapidly but we have to wait ages for the doctor (apparently only one speaks English). And thank God his English was impeccable! Matt was able to explain what was going on and the doctor immediately said he must have either a parasite or a bacteria, but nothing too bad. We are reassured! To know what treatment to give Matt, the doctor should first understand if it’s the bacteria or the parasite, and to know that no other way than testing a sample of the stools. But of course, after sitting on the toilet for the major part of the day, Matt crumbles under pressure and can’t produce any poop at all… so we leave the clinic with a prescription for meds against the stomach pain and the diarrhea, but we will have to come back the next day with a sample. We spent well over 3 hours at the clinic, even if we saw the doctor only 20 minutes, the paperwork took for ever!

The next morning, Matt finally produced the so awaited poop! And after a couple of hours we had the results. We were supposed to wait in line for another doctor to read us the results and prescribe the meds needed, but fortunately, the doctor from the previous night had given us his Whatsapp number, and asked us to simply send him a pic of the results and he would tell us what meds Matt needed to take. We like his efficiency! Though not sure it fits the clinic’s best practice… Anyway, simply a pill per day during 5 days and the bleeding should stop.

We then decided to go walk around Santa Cruz for Matt to see the city a little bit (not like Maider in Copacabana).

And in the afternoon, we returned to the hostel. We sat by the pool and started doing some research on how to go visit the Amboro jungle, known for its exceptional flora and wildlife. But the crazy prices asked by travel agencies (we cannot visit the park without an official guide) and the fact that Matt doesn’t have an anti malaria treatment with him (we have had enough misadventures recently), made us decide to skip the Amboro park. Instead, our days in Santa Cruz will be dedicated to rest only.

The next day, we spent the day at the Güembé Biocenter. Located at 10 miles from Santa Cruz, the center is a little piece of paradise, with its 24 hectares of tropical forest.

In the park, there is a biological sector where you can see butterflies,

turtles,

monkeys,

or several types of birds.

A beautiful place where we spent a lot of time. Maider was so happy to see parrots from so close!

There was also an island in the middle of a lake filled with monkeys.

And finally, all the swimming pools where we spent a major part of our afternoon.

Being in the middle of the week we had the place almost to ourselves. We were delighted! Our taxi driver told us that during the weekend you can forget it, the thing is packed.

On the way, he also shows us the great disparity of wealth in Santa Cruz. Indeed, if on one side you see people living with almost nothing, on the other we drove past massive gated areas where the rich live. In huge houses, security guards everywhere, impossible to get in if not invited!

We also crossed a river outside of Santa Cruz, and we were shocked to see it completely dry. The taxi driver explains that we are in the middle of the dry season, it really only rains in December and January, at what points the river fills up. But the rest of the time, the weather is really dry and it’s not uncommon to have entire weeks where the temperature reaches 100°F.

For our last couple of days before heading to Sucre, we hung out around the pool (the breakfast or the beers around the pool stay by far the best),

scanning and sending all the documents of our little visit to the Clinic so our insurance can reimburse us, and finally keep working on the blog. These articles don’t write themselves!

It’s a 13h30 long bus ride that awaits us to get to Sucre. Let’s hope that this time nobody will get sick! We got our fair share recently 😉 .