All Quiet in Samaipata

Hi Folks:
Carnivale has ended and peace has once again descended over the land of Bolivia. Samaipata was dead quiet when we left this morning except for the milkman`s "mooing" car. When I frist heard it, I was certain that there was some ritualistic animal torture going on and had to investigate. It has the sickest sounding "moo" that you ever heard. But that is all that it is, a farmer selling bulk milk out of the back of his station-wagon.
After Joy having 2 days of painting and me reading 2 books, we were off this morning in a taxi for Santa Cruz. It was the usual 8 person micro-bus with 10 people in it. Other than a 1 hour wait for the road to be cleared after an explosion, we arrived safely in the city. We didn`t pause, but were off to the train/bus station, where we found out that we could not catch today`s "ferrobus", which is a kind of bus on rails. So we settled on tomorrow`s "Oriental Express" and will stay over tonight in Santa Cruz. The "Oriental Express" is also known as the "train of death" so we thought that it might be fun. It runs from Santa Cruz, over-night, to the border of Brazil. As we depart South America from Sao Paulo, Brazil on the 5th, getting into Brazil seems like a good idea. We will still have to cut across most of Brazil by bus, but Joy says that she loves the bus (not!).
With a view to getting into Brazil, and not wanting to be stuck at the border at least 15 hours away from the nearest Brazilian visa issuing entity, we then visited the Brazilian Consulate here and confirmed that our visas were good for 90 days from our first entry. Seems like we are good to go.
Next entry should be from Brazil, if all goes right.
Jim