The long journey to southern America

After a pleasant night flight that flew by, we arrived in Sao Paulo at dawn, where we had a few hours of layover before our connecting flight to Santa Cruz. As immigration in Brazil is quite painless, even friendly, we even briefly entered the country to be able to move freely throughout the entire terminal area. We even performed a good deed by handing over a 35-year-old woman's Brazilian ID card that Bettina had found on the floor to the police station. After a shopping spree and stretching our legs through the endless terminal corridors, the time had finally come and we could board our flight with the Brazilian airline GOL to our first destination, Santa Cruz de la Sierra in eastern Bolivia. However, this 2½-hour flight was rather unpleasant, but not because of the airline or the weather. We were simply surrounded by completely unnecessary, thoughtless, and unfriendly people. It is worth mentioning that they were by no means locals, and I wondered silently if this type of behavior is considered "cultural enrichment" by certain circles in South America.

In any case, we were very glad to be able to free ourselves from this unpleasant company and finally reach our destination after traveling for over 18 hours. With a certain satisfaction, we watched as our newfound friends (a group of at least 10 people) were neatly sorted and isolated even before immigration.

So here we are in Santa Cruz, a rather unspectacular city that quickly becomes faceless a few streets away from the historic center. Just outside the city, there is a nature park with an impressive sand dune. Unfortunately, we never reached this destination with our Uber driver. The road was constantly interrupted by construction sites with huge piles of sand and dirt, and the detours did not bring any success either. So we decided to turn back and ended up taking a good half-hour sightseeing tour through an extremely ugly neighborhood.

Anyway, we were tired, and the jet lag was slowly setting in. The temperatures here are around 30 degrees Celsius, but there is a pleasant breeze. After a short visit to the beautiful patio of the Goethe-Institut, where a German cultural event (no, not Oktoberfest...) was taking place, we forced ourselves to have dinner, which was sumptuous, very meat-heavy, and extremely affordable and delicious.

So, the start went relatively well, and now we are finally enjoying the long-awaited nightsleep.