Vern: We spent two more quiet days in Samaipata. One day hanging around the hostel listening to two Spanish guys play classical guitar (which relaxed us like a resort holiday soundtrack) and the other walking in the hills around the town. Then we caught a night bus to Sucre. This was the first long distance bus we've taken without a bathroom on board, and the solution was to pull the bus over at a halfway point in a nowhere town then wake everyone up at 2:30am an...

Vern: We started our fourth day in town in a terrible archaeological museum watching a short film meant to explain 'El Fuerte' (the Fort) a mystical red rock, and the village which formed around it, which sits in the mountain above Samaipata and is covered with carvings and etchings dating back past 500 BC. However they don't actually know much as they only had the budget to excavate 10% of the complex. Nonetheless the film-maker was commissioned to fill up 20 mi...

Vern: The shared taxi from Santa Cruz to Samaipata leaves when full so we sat down in a little taxi office and waited. A few men wandered in and added their names to a list on a chalk board so Andrea insisted I add our names too so we wouldn't be forgotten about, and we sat patiently and ate an ice cream and twiddled our thumbs. Finally a car filled up and we left though no other passenger names were ever added to the chalkboard. We enquired and it turned out to ...

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...