Subject: Post: <p>Uhh.. That was a long journey. I promise I won't complain about long-haul flights for a while..</p><p>The journey begun relatively easy. Four hour bus to Caceres was comfortable and air conditioned and we were sleeping almost all the way. Upon arrival to Caceres we took a taxi to the local police station to get our passports stamped for exiting Brazil, and then another taxi to the border. The taxi driver then took us about 70 kilometers from Caceres to the Bolivian border city, San Mathias.</p><p>Finding the entry stamps to Bolivia was a bit more difficult process, the migration office at the bus station was closed and we had to find another one in the city. Nobody exactly expected money changer to be located in a clothes store either, so the friendly old taxi driver was great help to us. We actually paid him pretty much over the originally agreed price, as the guy had to go through a lot of extra trouble to help us out.</p><p>When we finally had fresh Bolivian stamps in our passports and some Bolivian money in the pockets we were already couple of minutes past the departure time of the last bus. Luckily here in South America the schedules are not so exact, ticketing office lady just called to the bus station and asked the bus to wait for us. Now here begun the fun part of the trip. The bus was not exactly an air conditioned comfortable bus with fully reclining seats like the Brazilian ones. No, it was maybe from the sixties and barely in one piece.. And the trip would take 25 hours.</p><p>The first hours were actually relatively easy on the hot bus. We just looked at Pantanal scenary and relaxed while our shitty bus crawled kilometer after kilometer on the unpaved dirt road, and after sunset we just watched a couple of movies before sleeping. At three in the morning the bus stopped: There were trucks stuck in mud in front of us and the road was blocked. So, there we were happily stuck in middle of nowhere for hours, before the situation finally started to clear around nine in the morning. It needed some Finnish power to clear it, an old Finnish-made Valmet tractor from the seventies to pull the big trucks off the mud.</p><p>Finally the unpaved road ended and our bus started progressing faster and less shaking towards Santa Cruz where we arrived in a couple of hours more. We walked to a local hostel which seems to be a nice place, ordered cold Caipirinhas and are looking forward to their "eat all you can" Barbeque evening today after only eating cookies on bus for two days. :)</p> Latitude: Longitude: Security Code:
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