Let me tell you all a little about the change situation in bolivia. the thing is, they don´t have it. everyone here holds onto their small bills and coins for dear life. it´s not like in the states where you give the vendor some money and they calmly and gracious give you your change in a timely manner. no no. that would be too easy. if you don´t happen to have exact change, all hell breaks loose. they flip. then you just stand there looking at eachother until someone has an idea of how to fix the situation. take today for example. I was walking towards the market to buy some bread, when this lady comes up to me and asks me if i want to buy some honey. as it just so happened, i really did want honey and was super excited that she was selling it because normally there is none is the main market area. anyway, a liter costs 25Bs, and i only had 50 (the bank in santa cruz only doles out 50s and 100s, which is highly inconvenient). so i give her the 50 and anxiously await my change. as expected, she doesn´t have it. so she waits until some other people buy some honey, but they just buy a lot and give her big bills. no help. then we ask a couple vendors next to her if they have change. of course not. people would give their left arm before they gave up their precious change. so finally, the solution is that she will just follow me around while i shop and pay for my stuff until she has returned all my change. seriously, it was really weird. i would point out what i wanted, then she´d pay for it and put it in my bag. Then we´d continue on like that until i had bought 25 Bs worth of food. i wasn´t even planning on spending that much, but that was the only way to get my money back!! so an hour later i had my honey and about 3 times more food than i was meaning to buy, but that´s just bolivia for you. you never know what´s going to happen!! but hey, for fresh, raw honey i´ll put up with a bolivian personal shopper any day!!