Day 2 - July 19, 2017 Santa Cruz, Bolivia

The crowdiness at the airport in Santiago totally surprised us. The line up was extremely long and lines were sprawling everywhere.  We managed to find the right line and knew how to work along with the system quickly. The lines were simply to drop off the luggage after getting the boarding passes from the kiosk!  The crowdedness was due to the country had just finished their annual winter holidays and everyone was flying home.  It didn't help when the airport was very small and is in the midst of expanding. 

The flight from Santiago to Santa Cruz took 3 hours and we were served with a small sandwich or muffin on board.  Taxi fares have to be negotiated as they do not use meters.  It took half an hour to get to our hotel which was situated right next to the cathedral and the central plaza in the old section of the town. 

Santa Cruz is on the flat land east of the Andes. We pick this as our entry point to Bolivia to have a more graduated altitude gain plan. Santa Cruz is only 300m in attitude. After, we're flying to Sucre at 2800m. Then comes Potosi at over 4000m. Uyuni and the Salar tour is next at over 4500m. La Paz and Lake Titicaca will be our last stops at over 4500m.

Despite being the most cosmopolitan and having the best developed economy in Bolivia, Santa Cruz was more under developed than we had expected. It was interesting to note that they like to have similar services or products congregated on the same street. For example, they have the entire street selling eyeglasses, exchange currencies, ice creams, shoes, furniture, or hair cut. Not sure how they manage the competitions. One thing we forgot about SA's culture was their habitual siesta in the midday. Not much was going on when we arrived near noon and life came back after 2:30 pm till about 8:00 pm.