Welcome to the hippy vilage.

Santa Cruz. What can i say. its been eventful! the food is amazing; the drinks are just as good. every person I have come across has been helpful and accommodation to my hybrid language of English and Spanish.
a point to mention, I now know the names of my acquaintances. Roy and Timo from Amsterdam, Florian from Cognac France, Lolo from cape town south Africa and mark from Berlin Germany. I know a right mix of people. well the 1st night we all decided to spend the day exploring Santa Cruz, a nice town, beautiful looking buildings in the city centre and as you get further and further from the centre the more it becomes shacks. a lot of places I have been now seem to follow a similar pattern. (See attached pictures for the diversity). as it was getting late into the evening we decided to go out and eat, found a nice little place called KIWIS. run by a local who moved to America, married then moved back to Bolivia to start up a restaurant. we then went on to a bar locally and drank and got merry with the local people, was good not to be surrounded by gringos! the next day myself and Lolo went in search of somewhere for him to bye some cloths (the airport lost his luggage). we got epically lost in the very poor parts of Sata Cruz, on the bright side we were amongst the more indigenous looking Bolivians and the markets were very nice to have a wander through. there are so many good places to eat and drink in Santa Cruz, on the second night after leaving a swanky looking bar we stumbled upon some local Bolivian people (mainly down to Lolo’s impeccable charisma. on the spur of the moment we all piled into a car and were off for a house party! the night was very spur of the moment. the next morning some of the people in my group went off to meet up with the females they had become attached to on the night, I had a swim and in the evening a good all you can eat BBQ put on by the hostel. all you can eat and drink sounds good to me for 7 quid. needles to say I was stuffed by the end.

Roy, Timo left for Sucre, mark for Asia and Lolo for somewhere else in Santa Cruz. so me and Florian decided to have a 2 day trip to samaipata to visit the mountains and a word heritage site called la Fuertes, an ancient pre-Hispanic Inca fortress on top of a mountain. we did a lot of hiking, the scenery was, indescribably (pictures attached). I tried to capture the beauty but was unable to. in samipata we sore quite a bit of wild life, vultures, birds, insects, butterflies. it was nice. saminpata is properly one of the most beautiful places I have been in my life and I will most certainly be returning here when I am older. its a village full of hippy travellers and indigenous mountain people, giving the town a very relaxed feel and the buildings are lovely. I bought some souvenirs from the hippies, hand crafted from organic materials sounds good to me. I am now back in Santa Cruz, hostel in La Pàz booked for tomorrow, bus to La Paz booked for today. 17 hours. I could have flown for a slight increase in price but with the altitude of La Paz they say its better to acclimatize slowly on the way up instead of flying. I look forward to the activities in La Paz, mark came from there previously and he climbed snow caped mountains and rode bikes down dirt roads, both of which appeals to me! A bit of adrenalin never killed anyone. 

ile blog next from la paz.
Sean