Day 15 - Back to Peru with a pitstop in Santa Cruz (Lima)

Santa Cruz, Bolivia

It was a long day on the Salt Flats yesterday and after a late dinner and a nice long hot shower, I was snug in bed at just after 11pm.

The hostel here in Uyuni was one of the top rated ones and it was easy to see why.

Just having a heater in my dorm room meant I didn’t have to bundle all up in clothes and multiple layers of blankets.

In fact, I tossed all the extra bedding to the side and just slept with the thinnest blanket they had.

I did have one complaint though – the top bunk was way too low and I hit my poor little head on the wooden bar separating the beds multiple times.

Yeah, I know, first world problems…

Anyway, after a nice night’s sleep, I was up and about at 7:15 to get ready for the taxi driving me to the airport an hour later.

As I got ready I noticed I once again had burnt the tip of my nose. The first time it happened in Cusco, I thought I just hadn’t properly applied the suntan lotion but now I figured out why.

The constant change in temperatures has caused me to have a runny nose for most of the time here and all the constant nose blowing through the day yesterday wiped off the suntan lotion on the tip of my nose.

So, long story short, I’m Rudolph.

Anyway, I quickly packed up my stuff in the dark room and went out to the common area to wait for the taxi.

Thankfully one of my roomies who was also packing up at the same time had noticed I had left my toiletry bag just lying on the ground and brought it out to me.

Phew.

That woulda sucked!

I swear to God, packing up your stuff in a dark room in the early hours of the morning is the best way to love stuff along the way.

A morning of airplanes

At 8:15 the taxi arrived to take me to the airport and after a whopping 4 minutes to pass through security, I was waiting ready at the gate of this tiny, tiny airport with 45 minutes to spare.

Oh, yeah, let’s talk about the flights today.

I wanted to fly to Lima today. That was my goal.

The airlines decided that I needed to take 3 planes to do it.

The first two this morning were a short flight from Uyuni back to La Paz and then another flight to Santa Cruz.

I’d have a 6 hour layover in Santa Cruz before boarding my final flight in the early evening finally taking me to Lima.

No worries though. I mean, yeah, it sucks having to spend the whole day on planes but I was making the best of it by exploring Santa Cruz for a few hours this afternoon.

Anyway, the first flight went off without a hitch and, in fact, I had the entire row to myself.

When boarding my second flight, the gate agent pulled me aside because my end destination was outside of Bolivia and they needed to see proof of onward travel back home from Peru.

So, after fiddling through my phone looking for emails from a couple of months ago, I showed her my info and I was on my way.

This time I shared my row with an older Asian couple from Perth, Australia who were part of a 16 person group tour with G-Adventures.

They were spending a month traveling through 4 different countries and when they said that I remembered why I hate tour groups so much.

They described how each day was go, go, go with no break times and no time to just take for yourself.

I don’t know, I just can’t really operate with someone telling me where I have to be and how long I get to be there.

I’ve always been more of a solo, figure it out on my own, kind of traveler.

For some reason my ears never popped on the second flight and parts of that hour flight were very excruciating as I could feel a sharp pain in my left ear at times and no matter what I tried, the ears just would not pop.

That was the first time I’ve experienced that and, honestly, hope I don’t again.

My ears didn’t fully pop until later in the afternoon as I walking around town.

Santa Cruz Layover

On the flight in, the man sitting next to me mentioned that Santa Cruz was the capitol city of Bolivia, something I didn’t realize.

Now, usually capitol cities aren’t really geared up for tourism and I remember thinking “oh oh” when I heard him say that.

We arrived in Santa Cruz just after noon and I had to do a double take when my phone was telling me the temperature here was 29C.

29C ?????

No, it can’t be.

After days and days of low temperatures I was about to spend the afternoon wandering around in the heat.

I tore off my jacket, stored my bag at the airport, and took the 135 minibus into town.

The ride into town took about a half hour and only cost 6.50bs ($1.50).

After getting off the bus downtown I wandered down the streets towards a well reviewed restaurant in the city center.

And, would you know it, like last night, the restaurant just simply wasn’t there.

Okay, what the hell is going on with Google? Stop recommending stuff that ain’t there!

So, quick audible and I wandered a bit more until I found a little hole in the wall serving a few different dishes.

I ordered what turned out to be the most phallic dish I could have ordered.

A sausage with beef patty, fries, rice, and a huge wad of mayonnaise just lying on the plate.

They absolutely love their ketchup and mayonnaise here in Peru and Bolivia. No lie!

The meal, with a coke, was only 25bs ($5) so the value was there definitely.

By 2:00 I was done lunch and I had a few hours to explore.

Unfortunately, as I suspected, the town of Santa Cruz is very much a capitol city with very, if any, touristy things around.

In fact, I didn’t happen upon a single souvenir stand anywhere and I walked around multiple streets.

The one “attraction” they have is a little park, Plazuela Callejas, which is supposed to be the exact center of South America.

Now, I don’t know how true that is. I mean, it’s such a small park and there’s no big annotation about it being the center.

However, it was a nice place to just sit on a bench in the shade and try to figure out the rest of the afternoon.

As I saw it, I had a couple of options.

Both involved me walking about a half hour back to the road where I disembarked from my bus earlier.

I could either head straight back to the airport early or get off at an earlier stop and walk over to a place I had marked selling gluten free desserts.

Now, when I say I was torn, I mean torn as to which to do.

My recent experience of going to restaurants only to find them non exist along with my genuine fatigue from a long afternoon of walking in the heat pushed me towards skipping dessert.

In the end, I arrived at the airport at just after 4pm for my 6:30 flight which obviously is entirely too early.

But, whatever, I went out, I explored, I ate some good cheap food.

I had seen and done what I wanted to in Santa Cruz and now I was ready for Lima.

On to Lima

My earlier easy movement through security was thrown a bit of a curve ball for this last flight.

Turns out I had to fill out an immigration form since I was leaving Bolivia for Peru.

Ironically, I had totally filled out the form online and printed it before I had left for this trip.

Stupid me though thought it was for entry into Bolivia so I actually threw it out last week when I arrived.

No worries though, since I was sooooo early I just sat on a little bench and filled out a new paper form.

After a couple of seamless xrays and a stamp from an border control officer, I was off to the gate.

After a half hour delay, we were finally off to Lima.

The first two flights at an hour a piece had no food or drink service and I was pretty much expecting the same for this flight.

However, a half hour into the flight, the attendants came through with a trays of food and drinks.

Well, that just makes me sad!

A sandwich and a muffin.

Yes, I’m sure they taste amazing but, sadly, as a celiac I can’t have either.

I just offered them up to the guy in the seat next to me and snacked on some of the gluten free cookies I had bought the other night.

Getting to the hostel

Because of the delayed takeoff, we arrived in Lima around 8:40 tonight instead of 8:00.

There’s a couple of shuttle bus companies that transfer between the airport and Miraflores, the part of town most tourists including myself stay in.

However they only run every hour on the hour and I had resigned myself to taking the 10:00 bus instead of the originally planned 9:00 bus.

There was a glimmer of hope though as I was in and out of immigration quickly and actually was out of the airport doors at 8:58.

It was all for naught though as the guy manning the shuttle bus desk told me that the 9:00 bus had been cancelled so in the end, I guess none of that mattered.

I waded myself past countless men trying to get me into their taxis to where the shuttle bus would arrive.

Hey, I was here. That’s all that mattered. What’s another hour of waiting?

And then, 20 minutes later, a shuttle van from the other company showed up across the street.

My guess is that this was their 9:00 bus but it was late.

Hey, whatever, worked out for me.

For 20sol ($7), they transport you into Miraflores and, at this time of night, the trip only took 40 minutes.

Big city vibes

I gotta be honest, it felt weird being in a big city again.

After a full two weeks being in and around small towns, seeing a vibrant city at 10:00 at night on a Tuesday felt so strange.

Couple things of note. One, I’m back at sea level. No more high altitudes and breathless walks. I actually noticed I wasn’t huffing and puffing as I walked briskly through the airport tonight.

Oh, and the temperature is normal! The entire day, the temperature swings are from 14C to 18C and it was a decent 16C when I arrived.

Also, places are open late at night compared to Uyuni last night where pretty much everything shut down by 8:00.

I got to my hostel and checked into a small 4 bed dorm. It was pretty stuffy in there and, honestly, I may look at perhaps changing to a private room. I’ll wait and see how the sleep goes tonight.

After setting up, I was off to grab a very late night dinner.

The problem with the area of town I’m staying in is that it is completely touristy which means, sadly, that all the restaurants are also touristy.

Just down the street there’s a Starbucks, KFC, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and a Burger King.

This would take a bit of work to grab a good meal tonight.

In the end I went to a Peruvian fast food kind of place. I saw the menu board with one of the items translating to “Chicken, Ham, Cheese, and Egg” and thought “Hell ya!”

I ordered it with a side of fries and an, oh so missed, Chica Morada and then she asked me if I wanted mayo and ketchup on my bun.

Whoa, what?

Oh crap. It was a sandwich joint.

No worries, I just needed to adapt a bit…