While in Santa Cruz we discovered the abundance of Internet cafes that we have later observed throughout Bolivia and Peru. Unlike US, where Internet cafes are non-existent, or Europe, where they are rare and expensive, in Bolivia and Peru public access to the Internet is both abundant and cheap. And when I say “cheap” I don’t mean just cheap for gringos like us – at 2 bolivianos (US$.25) an hour, I seemed reasonably cheap by local standards as well. (Bs.2 is about the price of a bottle of local soda or a ¼ of the price of a cheap lunch in Bolivia. 2-3 euros – roughly the price of an hour of Internet in Europe – buy you a bit more than that.) The Internet was slightly more expensive in Peru (typically 1.5 soles = US$.40), but so were most of other prices. While Internet cafes tend to be most concentrated in places where you might encounter tourists, you can also find them in places where few tourists would go (which we passed on a bus). You could find them in large and small towns.

In addition to the typical sign “Internet” and a nearly ubiquitous large “@” sign, most places featured “Juegos en red” (“Network games”) as the subtitle. A list of exact services was often includes on a separate plate, often counting CD-burning, scanning, ICQ and, somewhat to my surprise, mIRC.

Many places also offered IP phone calls to most parts of the world for about Bs 1.5 (later 1 sole in Peru) – the cost of a Skype-out call plus a little bit of markup. As is usually the case with IP phone calls, the cost seemed to depend more on the size of the city where the call ended rather than the distance: Bs 1.00 for Rio de Janeiro and other major cities, but Bs. 1.50 or 2.00 for suburban Petropolis.

Unfortunately, I did not get an idea of photographing any of the Internet cafes until we were in Lima, when it was already too late.