Dry At Last

Opening my bag upon arriving in Cochabamba I found a moldering pile of damp clothes, smelling the same as my room had in Santa Cruz. Why oh why did I spend a week there? I have things to do, people to meet, places to be, I want to be in Mexico in April! Onward and upward!

I was beginning to think that Santa Cruzians hated foreigners, without exception, when, Goddess of irony strong as ever, we went for a cuppa half an hour before our bus left and encountered an extremely friendly waitress, who sat and chewed the cud with us. Yes Alanis, it certainly is like ra-ain on your wedding day.

Anyway, Cochabamba is nice and dry and hot, all of my clothes are out airing on the washing line as I type, and apparently the night life here is all within the centre. Things are looking up. Just hope no one's run off with my pants.

I wrote this yesterday. Ms Morissette is having the last laugh. My dreams were invaded by thunder and lightning during the night. I swear it was right above us. In my dreams there was no gap between the flashes of lightning and the cracks of thunder. It is now tipping it down. It's still not humid though, thank God. And no one took my pants.

You're Not That Far

I'm really not that enamoured with Santa Cruz. I think it's partly the weather, it's really, really humid. Once your clothes are damp that's it. And I don't think it's helped by my dank room, I've been meaning to change hostels for days, but I've not managed to catch the midday checkout time yet, and I intend to leave for Cochabamba on Monday. Anyway, apart from the humidity, this town is apparently like an American town in that there's nothing much to do in the center (sorry, centre), you have to get a taxi out to the "strips", where lots of big neon signed karaoke bars live. So far the song that has gone down the best for me has been Big Spender, during which I did big kicks for the Bah-Baah-Bah-Bah bit, afterwards a guy came up and gave me a drink(!) we rocked the party!

But I've been loving Bolivia so far. It's really surprised me, one of my favourite phrases of the moment is "I just wasn't expecting this from Bolivia." And it's not just the flamingos. No one prepared me for the food. I had been warned that it was going to be boring, and my first meal in Bolivia, after asking for a steak sandwich (lomito, a speciality around these parts) and then a hamburger, I was informed that there was only one thing on the menu which used four of the most boring ingredients known to mankind: roast chicken, chips, rice and pasta (I kid ye not). Topped off with a chili sauce which WAS NOT HOT. But since then I have been amazed by the culinary delights of these parts, though at the moment we are frequenting a place reminiscent of Disney World.

Being a stickler for credit I have to thank Maddy for the title of this post, though aptly she thought the song went "Santa Cruz you're not that fine."

No Future II

Life is beautiful.

Recent highlights include: watching a group of friends sing Manu Chau's Me Gusta Tu at a Bolivian karaoke bar, watching a very drunk Dave fall through the screen at said karaoke bar*, spending the afternoon lazing with Melanie watching Sucre from a hilltop**, getting soaked to the skin running through the pouring night rain and lightning of Santa Cruz with the same Melanie.

* Afterwards the owner of the bar wanted $500 for a broken guitar, Dave, being a musician, and drunk, demanded to see the "probably just scratched" guitar. The "scratch" was actually a break at the neck.

** Unfortunately this meant we got to the bus stop 15 mins before all the buses left for Santa Cruz and had to travel on separate buses. This made the forced stop behind a landslide at 3:30am quite sweet, after walking a not insignificant distance in either direction I discovered her bus was directly behind mine. The journey was only supposed to be 13-17 hours, it ended up at 24.