Vern: We arrived early in Santa Cruz and checked into a 'Residencial' - a very basic hotel with 4 firm steel hospital beds, then found some delicious salteñas and pre-sweetened black coffee from a street vendor. The people in Santa Cruz seem better dressed, wealthier and more cosmopolitan than elsewhere and every other car is a SUV. They don't seem to work much, though, as travel agents and most retailers close their doors over lunch - taking one's own lunch bre...

Vern: We enjoyed a divine papaya milkshake and some salteñas at the market in Rurrenabaque before heading over to the Amazonas airline offices. We joined a handful of other passengers and sat for ages while they finished off a staff meeting in front of us and then hurried us onto the airport-bus as if we were holding up the trip. The airport was a barnlike building next to a landing strip with a doorless outhouse round back, a few benches and two men at desks on...

Andrea: Our taste of the Amazon continued with our pampas tour from Rurrenabaque. Some of the group from the previous boat trip managed to book on our boat so we were excited to have some familiar faces on the tour. We jumped in a jeep with the Australian couple, the Aussie/Kiwi couple and a new couple from Quebec and set off on a 3 hour journey down rough dirt roads with the driver peering through a windshield that was severely cracked and seemingly held togethe...

Vern: To get to Rurrenabaque, a small town within the Amazon jungle, we decided on the path least travelled, the river. The options were: a short boring flight; a bus ride said to be so scary that travelers seek out Valium from shady pharmacies in La Paz; or a little known travel company who run tourists up the river in a simple wooden motorboat over three days, with camping each night on the riverside. We stayed in foggy Coroico for two uneventful days, living ...

Vern: We arrived in La Paz after a lengthy but uneventful bus ride. Andrea was stung for $135 reciprocity fee for a visa for USA citizens. She was actually lucky to get one as the visa is a sticker which is pasted into one's passport and the border post only had two stickers left on the reel. The third American on the bus was permitted into the country but instructed to present himself at a government building the next day. He shrugged off the inconvenience but i...