Sucre - Santa cruz

day 29 - The ill day - Sucre
Although having booked to go mountain biking today with the rest of the group i was feeling awful. I got up on time and dragged myself to breakfast but afterwards was feeling too sick to go. I spent the whole day in bed sleeping and was still tired. I wasn´t hungary but forced myself to drnk loads of water in order to try and flush it out. In the evening it was the groups last meal with the current tour leader. I really didn´t want to go but as it was the last night i forced myself. It was in a really nice french resturant and i had a really tasty apple and something chicken curry. After dinner i went straight back to bed. What a productive day.

Day 30 - Santa Cruz
Despite still feeling ill i forced myself up in order to say goodbye to the 3 of our group that were leaving. I wasn´t too concerned about Ivon, who although nice, was 33 and german so we didn´t talk much, i had no time for aaisha who didn´t intergrate with the group at all and was very rude, but i would really miss mike who was hilarious and really good fun. After we had said goodbye to them we headed for breakfast before a couple of people went off to a local orphanage. I stayed behing toget a little more rest and pack before heading off to the local markets with danielle in order to try and buy presents and spend the last of my Bolivianos. After a pretty unsucessful morning we returned to the hotel in order to catch our flight to Santa Cruz. We left at 1 for our flight at 3 butit actually left at 4:30 so there was quite a bit of waiting aorund. The flight was only 30 mins long and seemed a bit pointless when we were getting 4-8 hour buses all the time. When we arrived we met our new tour leader ziada (pronounced cider) and went back to our hotel. After checking in we went to the main square to watch the football (the south american cup) on a big screen with all the locals. It was pretty cool and the atmosphere was intense, especially when it went to penalties. It was Argentina vs Uraguay so the crowd was split pretty 50:50 but there was no hostility. It was quite an experience. After the game we went out for dinner and i was sat next to the new person to join our group, Morti from Norway. He was really cool andi found out he was a investment banker who had now started his own private equity firm with a partner which i´ll have to speak to him more about sometime in the trip.

Day 31 - Santa Cruz
Our room had no windows and we forgot to set an alarm so we woke up pretty late. Having realised i had lost my card (probablly back in sucre) i spent most of the day sorting that out inbetween wandering round the town. For lunch we had the most collosal chicken and chips for next to nothing before returning to the hotel ready for the ngiht train. The rumours were that the night train would be pretty horrible and lasted for 16 hours so on the way back we stopped for snacks and sleeping pills. At the train station our tour guide realised that gap had made a mistake and that we were in fact booked into first class. It was pretty good with big reclining seats and a free dinner and breakfast. The dinner and breakfast were pretty poor bnut the journey itself wasn´t bad at all and before we knew it we were on the Bolivia-Brazil border.