With bated breath

Butterflies
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We had a couple of hours to chill out in Sucre before heading to the airport to catch a short internal flight to Santa Cruz. For the first time in ages we were going to be at a much more reasonable altitude (less than 500 metres asl) & boy, how much were we all looking forward to that (may normal breathing etc. recommence)?! I was particularly excited about the descent in altitude since I'd had a (probably altitude-related) headache for much of the past week. Fingers crossed...

Butterfly
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So we reached Santa Cruz & what turned out to be one of the least pleasant towns I'd seen in South America. The first afternoon was spent pottering around the centre - doing a bit of market browsing & tat shopping. We'd arranged to meet Fredy in the evening to go & see The Da Vinci Code (my first cinema outing since leaving home last December). However, after we'd waited for him for over an hour (& tried to track him down through various means) we decided to go without him. We had a great time at the cinema, but were all quite worried as to what had happened to Fredy - that maybe he'd been mugged or something. Our fears were probably heightened due to Monica's random assault in town that afternoon (when she was hit in the face by a guy as he walked passed her - seemingly for no reason whatsoever!). Upon returning to our hotel we were informed by the owner that Fredy had turned up safe & sound, but gone back out drinking with a special "friend" that he'd bumped into in town (hence us being stood up). Grrrrrr. We were not best pleased!

Orchid garden
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We (minus Fredy who hadn't emerged from his room) spent the following day at a nearby butterfy park, which was fab. Really lovely landscaped gardens with a butterfly garden, orchid garden, lakes & outdoor swimming pools. We sneaked in a picnic (along with several others by the looks of it) & spent the day relaxing in the sunshine, swimming, reading, drinking pina coladas & eating ice-creams etc. Very nice, too :o)

That evening we had to catch an overnight train to the border with Brazil so stopped off to buy some provisions on our way back to the hotel. Nel & I managed to track down another Alexander Cafe (a chain of cafes I first discovered in La Paz) where you can buy the most gorgeous cheesecake!! As this was to be my last Alexander Cafe I didn't really have any choice (for old times' sake & all that)! It turned out to be a very long slog of an overnight train - especially since the movies being shown were all loud, in Spanish & of very poor quality (due to being pirates). One had even been filmed on a slight angle, which meant that the subtitles ran diagonally across the screen - & German subtitles at that! As such, I got stuck into my Discman instead.

Orchid
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Around 15 hours later we arrived in the town of Puerto Suarez on the Bolivian border. Crossing the border we reach Corumba from where we were to journey into the Pantanal Wetlands.