Bolivia, 1st impressions

Took off from Madrid at 12 am and after a restless 11 hour flight landed at 5:30 am at Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia. After passing through the customs and migration, I was out by 6:15 am. The pickup van was a bit late but we managed to find each other by 6:40 and we were off to the city.
Driving from the airport to the city, it felt like a drive on the Electronic City Road in Bangalore. Except that the boards were in Spanish, it looked like any Indian town. Once in the old town, there were quite some differences. The roads are much narrower, the buildings generally one or two stories only and all had terracotta roofs.
We reached the hostel by about 7:15 am. Since my room was still not available, I had to sit and wait in the hostel dining area. The expected availability time was 11 am, so I decided to finish the checkin, eat some breakfast and go for a city walk before I got the room.
The city center is just 5 blocks from the hostel so I left my bigger bag at the hostel and walked there. It was already 8:30 am and the sun had started to beat down on the town. It was around 20C but the slight breeze was very pleasant.
Most of the transportation seems to via mini buses called Micros. There were quite many banks in this area. Most of the banks had queues of people outside waiting to go in. It seemed most of them were very small inside or there were too many people all at the same time deciding to go to the bank. Here too, there was very beautiful graffiti on the walls.Read more