Santa Cruz Getting there & around

Getting there & away

Land

Bus, micro & shared taxi

The full-service bimodal terminal (348-8382; terminal fee US$0.40), the combo long-distance bus and train station, is 1.5km east of the center, just before the third anillo at the end of Av Brasil.

There are plenty of daily services morning and evening to Cochabamba (US$4 to US$6, 10 to 12 hours), from where there are connections to La Paz, Oruro, Sucre, Potosí and Tarija. Cosmos has a direct daily service to La Paz (US$6.50 to US$12.50, 16 to 25 hours).

Several companies offer daily evening services to Sucre (US$4 to US$14, 16 to 25 hours), with connections for Potosí. Most services to Camiri (US$8.50, seven to eight hours) and Yacuiba (US$9.50, 15 hours) depart in the mid-afternoon. Buses to Vallegrande (US$5.50, six hours) leave in the morning and afternoon.

To the Jesuit missions and all of Chi­quitanía, Misiones del Oriente buses leave in the morning and afternoon. Buses run to San Ramón (US$3, 2¾ hours), Asunción de Guarayos (US$4, five hours), San Javier (US$4, three hours), Concepción (US$4.50, six hours), San Ignacio de Velasco (US$8.50, nine hours), San Miguel de Velasco (US$10.50, 10 hours) and San Rafael de Velasco (US$11.50, 11 hours). Several other companies do the same routes but may be less comfortable.

To Trinidad (US$4.50 to US$10.50, at least 12 hours) and beyond, a number of buses leave every evening. Although the road is theoretically open year-round, at least to Trinidad, the trip gets rough in the rainy season and is frequently canceled for weeks on end.

Several companies also offer international services. Daily services connect Santa Cruz with Buenos Aires (US$62, 42 hours). In the dry season, you can attempt the Trans-Chaco Rd to and from Asunción, Paraguay (around US$52, 30 hours minimum).

Smaller micros and trufis (collective taxis or minibuses that follow a set route) to Viru-Viru airport, Montero (with connections to Buena Vista and Villa Tunari), Samaipata and other communities in Santa Cruz department leave regularly from outside the old bus terminal. To Buena Vista (US$2.75, 1½ hours), they wait along Izozog (Isoso). To Samaipata (US$3.50, three hours), trufis leave on the opposite side of Av Cañoto, about two blocks from the old bus terminal. Alternatively, ring Expreso Samaipata Taxis (333-5067; Ortíz 1147), which charges US$14 for up to four passengers.

Train

The Expreso del Oriente (the infamous Death Train) runs to Quijarro, on the Brazilian border, daily except Sunday at around 3pm (2nd-/­1st-/Pullman-class US$8/16/21). It takes at least 21 hours and in the wet season may not run at all. The train chugs through soy plantations, forest, scrub and oddly shaped mountains to the steamy, sticky Pantanal region on the Brazilian frontier. Bring plenty of food and water and mosquito repellent for long stops in swampy areas. About halfway, the train stops in San José de Chiquitos on the mission circuit, a good place to layover before continuing to Brazil.

Trains arrive the following day in Quijarro, from where taxis shuttle passengers to the Brazilian border town of Corumbá, 2km away. Don’t pay more than US$2 per person for the taxi – rip-offs are common. Once on the Brazilian side, get a yellow colectivo (minibus) from the kiosk at the border to Corumbá. The person inside the kiosk knows what time the buses leave, but they go frequently between 6am and 11pm (ticket to Corumbá US$1). You can change dollars or bolivianos into reais (hay-ice) on the Bolivian side, but rates are poor. Note that there’s no Brazilian consulate in Quijarro, so if you need a visa, get it in Santa Cruz. Don’t be surprised if an official asks for money for an exit stamp at Quijarro. From Corumbá there are good bus connections into southern Brazil, but no passenger trains.

Train tickets can be scarce and carriages are often so jammed with people and contraband that there’s nowhere to sit. Ticket windows (supposedly) open at 8am, and you can only buy your ticket on the day of departure, when lines reach communist proportions. A funkier alternative is to stake out a place in the bodegas (boxcars) of a mixed train and purchase a 2nd-class ticket on board (for 20% over the ticket-window price). The upmarket option is to buy a 1st-class ticket through a Santa Cruz travel agent. You must pay a US$1.50/4.50 national/international departure tax after purchasing your ticket.

Rail service to Yacuiba, on the Argentine border, is a reasonably quick and comfortable ferrobus (passenger rail bus; 2nd-/1st-/­Pullman-class US$5.50/7/14, nine hours), which supposedly departs at 5pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, returning on Wednesday and Sunday at 8pm.

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Air

Viru-Viru international airport (VVI; 181), 15km north of the center, handles domestic and international flights. Both AeroSur (336-4446; Irala at Colón) andLAB (334-4896; Chuquisaca 126) have daily services to Cochabamba, La Paz and Sucre, as well as several other Bolivian cities.

American Airlines (334-1314; Beni 167) flies direct daily to Miami, Aerolíneas Argentinas (333-9776; Junín 22) flies several times a week to Buenos Aires, and TAM Mercosur (337-1999; 21 de Mayo at Florida) flies to Asunción Monday to Saturday, with connections to Miami, Buenos Aires and several Brazilian cities.

TAM (353-2639) flies direct to La Paz (US$70) on Monday morning and about a couple more times a week from the military’s El Trompillo airport, just south of the center. It also runs popular direct flights to Puerto Suárez (US$65) a couple of times a week.

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