We stayed one night in La Paz and then got up the next morning and got a bus to a place called Cochabamba. The buses are surprisingly good in Bolivia- comfortable, clean and the drivers actually seem quite good and go very slowly on the hilly bits! It does mean we´ve always been about an hour or 2 late but that´s much better than the alternative! The jounrey to Cochabamba was amazing again. We went uphill for the first bit and so then lost loads of height. For ages it was the same barren altiplano as before but then we started to see more and more trees. There are so few roads here that you can see where you´ll be going next by seeing the other buses and lorries on different mountains! They´d promised us that there´d be a loo on the bus but it had broken (they also have) but we did stop at the most random remote service station ever where you can pay 1 Boliviano (about 9p) to use theirs. By the time we arrived in Cochabamba it was dark but it was clearly so different from the area near La Paz- it´s called the bread basket of Bolivia as things actually grow there!
We had a lazy day in Cochabamba and two consecutive nights in the same place! A first since Iquitos! There´s not much to do there but they have a huge market so we went shopping. We´d heard you could by "artesania" (Andean style touristy things like hammocks and alpaca scarfs) but we spent ages walking around past the cleaning products, spare parts for cars and live animals and started to get worried we´d missed our chance and should have caved in the touristy places in Peru. We eventually found it though and spent lots of money. So far though Bolivia has been really cheap- long-distance buses are about 3 or 4 pounds, a night´s accomodation between 4 and 6! Packing is now a bit harder though as we have all the things we bought and it´s too hot to wear jumpers so we need space for them too!
We left Cochabamba and spent another whole day travelling to Santa Cruz. We lost the remaining height really quickly and were suddenly in the rainforest again! It reminded me so much of Iquitos and was so hot after having got used to the cold at altitude. It´s amazing to have seen the transition of the continent from desert at the coast near Lima, to mountains, then the altiplano and now rainforest. It´s an incredible continent and I think it´s a really nice way to see it, even if it does involve a lot of buses!
We intended to stay one night in Santa Cruz but we were told that the train on Sundays is much nicer so we decided to stay 2. Unfortunately we´ve just found out they´re sold out of tickets so we have to get yet another bus! We´re a bit dissappointed but it is cheaper and yet still the most luxurious bus there is, so we might get some sleep! We head off in a couple of hours and get to Brazil tomorrow morning. Meanwhile we´ve been staying in a hostel with a pool so have had 2 very relaxing days swimming and reading books. I have just found out that the weather in the first part of Brazil we´re goin to is about 36 degress, 28 in Rio and 3 in Salvador so I may have to find more places with pools! It´s a hard life.
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