Kazakhstan the largest land locked country on Planet Earth, population 18 million, highest point 6398 metres, a rich heritage, Genghis Khan, Soviet rule, independence declared 21/08/1991.

We are not planning on visiting Kazakhstan on this trip, or any trip, to be honest. 

We are though, about to embark on the next stage of our journey and visit the Bolivia.

Bolivia the second largest land locked country on Planet Earth, population 10 million, highest point 6542 metres, a rich heritage, the Incas, Spanish rule, independence declared 06/08/1825.

Getting to Bolivia is a hurdle that, from a planning perspective, isn't as easy as we would hope.

The original plan was a simple overnight bus from Salta to the first large town/city over the border.  The thing is there doesn't seem to be a bus or the city that we had theoretically planned for.

Our last overland border crossing, although easy, was a total pain in the arse.

In contrast this one seems a hell of a lot worse for a whole range of reasons.

Ten hours on bus, bus changes at the borders, night crossings, shite roads, middle of nowhere destinations..blah,blah,blah.

You get the picture, add to this, carrying the kids and their luggage, there was only one option.

Try and find some cheap flights?

Thankfully we found some.

This still had its problems, card continuously declined, needed to print tickets etc, however, we got there in the end.

So fast forward and here we are landing in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. 

First is impression is, ooft it is hot, 35c to be exact. The sun isn't even out, it is overcast and in serious need of 'a bit of thunder to clear the air'.

As per the norm, we have arrived with no local currency, so following a fairly respectable 9 attemps at various cash machines, exploring all the various options, of cash withdrawals, we are in a taxi, and off to our accommodation.

We had (rather wisely, it would turn out) booked ourselves into a large, self catering, holiday complex type of place.  The main draw here is a pool. 

The heat has been getting to all of us and this is a welcome treat. 

Another big plus point is the price, Bolivia is the cheapest, price wise, not tacky wise, country I have ever visited. 

Clearly USA will forever be hard to beat in the tacky stakes.

The accommodation is simple yet comfortable.  There are tvs in each bedroom, not in the living area, not sure of the logic there.

There is also a kitchenette, equipped with two pans, no utensils, no oven, but thankfully a kettle.

Of all the self catering accommodation that we have stayed in, this is by far the most poorly equipped kitchen that we have encountered.

It is not all bad though, the rest of the apartment is fairly spacious and as I mentioned there were two tvs, which is also somewhat of a treat for us.

Where the apartment really came into its own was the bathroom facilities.

Everyone has heard of 'Delhi belly', however seen as we are about 16,000 km from India it would seem inaccurate to use that term.

In simple terms, within about an hour of arriving in this wonderful country, all four of us were suffering  from an acute case of:

Bolivian Bog Busting Syndrome

Nothing too serious, but an inconvenience all the same.

So you can only imagine how fortunate we all must have felt when we realised that our small apartment contained three separate Khazis (2 en suite + 1 off the living area).

Our health limited the distance we could travel from the complex and too be honest given the heat we probably wouldn't have chosen to do too much anyway.  So a lot of time was spent playing with our phones on the toilet and cooling down in the pool.

Santa Cruz is the largest city in Bolivia and given its size there is very little in the way of historic cultural attractions.

Where it lacks in culture, it gains in amenities. 

For example there is an immigration office and it so happened that we needed to extend our visa beyond the standard 30 days.

There is also a large (serious understatement) market, where you can apparently buy pretty much anything.

Last but by no means least and probably the main, if only reason we are here, it has an International Airport.

After a couple of days (we are staying for 5) we finally managed to channel our inner strength and venture out.

This isn't entirely true as I had managed a couple of trips to the supermarket and we had made a few visits to the extremely good value  on site restaurant.

This was our first real trip out, as a family.

We had a simple plan.  Get a taxi to the immigration office and get our visa's extended.

This started well, there is a taxi rank outside the complex and within a few moments we were off.

The streets were busy, loads going on, loads of traffic, car horns hooting, that sort of thing.

Although not far away and in theory walkable, it took about 15min to get there.

Success?

Nope, the office was closed, not a huge problem though, we hadn't even got out the cab.

So off we went heading back, paid the driver a very reasonable 2 pounds and we were back.

The thing with traveling in South America is that this sort of thing happens all the time, no point worrying about it.

We made more enquiries and we would need to return on the Tuesday, our second last day.

This doesn't exactly give us any contingency, but there is nothing we can do about, so just have to wait and see.

Buoyed by our semi success we decided to plan our next chore.

Sim Cards

Although disappointed, we were not at all surprised that our Argentinian sim cards didn't work in Bolivia. 

It would have saved us a lot of hassle if they did though.

We asked about and were told that we will definitely get some in the market and that the market is easy to find.

Round the back and across the road.

That's where we went and as accurate as the instructions to find the market were, they kind of missed out the fact that the market was quite large and where in the market we had to go.

The place was a hot, busy, claustrophobic maze of stalls selling anything from food to clothes to motorbikes.

The further in you got the harder it was to navigate and to negotiate all the stalls and people.

Periodically we would stop and ask for directions.  Each time we were pointed further and further into the market.

After about, let's say for dramatic effect 40mins, we finally reached a stall with the 'Tigo' sign that we were so desperately searching for.

Following some extensive research and analysis, Jessica identified Tigo as the top mobile phone provider in Bolivia.

So with the help of Google here we were in the shop of an agent of Tigo, Bolivia's number one mobile phone provider for full coverage across the whole country.

We were all relieved/extatic to get there and feelings of euphoria reached another level when we noticed that not only did place sell cold drinks, there wasn't even a queue.

The owner of the shop seemed a nice guy,  we were able to understand his Spanish, more importantly he was able to understand ours and it all seemed to being going well.

Then he dropped a bombshell. 

He was unable to sell us a sim card because he is not permitted to sell to non Bolivian citizens.

He explained that if we went to the main office that they would be able to help and even drew us a wee map on a post-it note of how to get there.

Most people would find this disparaging, not us though, we are the Finnies.

Naturally there is level of immediate disappointment and I am not going to lie and say that we didn't say "oh, for fuck sake" when we heard the bad news, however we were not going to be beaten this easily and off we went.

We never did find the 'main office' but during our search we did find another section of the market, across a busy road where lots of people were selling mobile phone cases.

Naturally we headed in deeper to investigate, then, out of nowhere there were Tigo signs everywhere. 

We hadn't found the 'main office', however we had found what appeared to be an Aladin's Cave of sim card, phone repair and accessory shops.

We picked a stall with no queue and headed on over. 

Just give a try, they might not ask for ID was our logic. 

It wasn't a quick transaction, they didn't even have one of those special pin/paperclip thingy majigers to take out our sims, there was music thumping from a nearby stall, communication was difficult.

Slowly but surely though we were getting there, it looked like we going to get our sims. 

We were even getting the option we were after, loads of data.

Then the call came out for our Bolivian ID cards.

'eh, no tengo tarjeta de Bolivia' was our reply.

This wasn't looking good, giving up was a serious consideration.

Thankfully, the sales assistant got her wallet out and used her own ID. Not sure what the implications of this is, however going with the flow is all we can do.

Happy as Larry, that's us back on the grid.

There isn't a huge amount more to say about time in Santa Cruz. 

The kids made some friends at the pool who were on holiday from Argentina and loved having others about to play with.

We went down to main square in town, however unbeknown to us it was a public holiday so nothing was open. This wasn't  really a problem as there was next to nothing to see. 

I believe the technical term is that Santa Cruz is an industrial city.

All that really leaves is our trip to the immigration office. 

There isn't really much to say though, in and out in 15min. No problem, no charge, no wait for a taxi outside.

Talking of taxis, they really are unbelievably cheap here and not seen as much as a luxury as back home. 

As strange as it seems, even over long distances the fares are not that much more than a bus.

Although the kids loved it here and would happily have staying on for longer, Jessica and I were ready for the next stage.

This involved a bit of trek (not on foot) and as the thought of a 5hrs on a minibus sounded brutal we needed another option.

Little bit of digging around and a couple of phonecalls and we booked our transport.

Not sure how the economics of this works, but for price of £15 we managed to get a people carrier taxi to drive us up into the mountains. 

We are heading off to the ancient remains of El Fuerte and the town of Samaipata.

Lorne