Sucre

15th May – 26th May 2008

To the sound of the Last Post, we boarded the Aerosur Boeing 727, bound for Sucre. The 40 year old plane had a retro feel to it – matched by the newly introduced Aerosur Stewardess uniforms. A real treat for the boys, they included a mix of hot pants, mini skirts and all in one jump suits. As we stepped on board, Ady noticed that we were in the safe hands of not only a Pilot and Co-Pilot, but a Navigator too, like in the 70’s Airplane movies!

The 30 minute flight took us over some spectacular scenery – we now understood why the equivalent bus journey would take 16 hours. Landing in Sucre was also quite hairy, as we almost touched the tops of the surrounding mountains on the approach.

Sucre, (Altitude 2700m) is the official capital of Bolivia, and was founded in 1538 as ‘La Planta’. Full of colonial buildings and home to 2 universities, the city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We headed into the centre of town and tried to find somewhere to stay. We found a room in the Amigo hostel for the princely sum of £2.20 per person a night. We soon found out why. Few of the lights worked when it got dark, and although it had been recently refurbished, it hadn’t been done very well. The following day we moved to the Backpackers Sucre, and for an extra 40p each we had a much larger room, with luxuries such as a mirror and curtains.

After an initial exploration of Sucre, we ended up signing up for a mountain bike trek the next day. We also discovered that yet again we weren’t going to be bored by Bolivian Cuisine. Within an hour we had spotted Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Mexican, French and even German restaurants!

The mountain biking called for an early start of 9am (well by our standards at least!), and we headed to the office to meet our group. It turned out that there was only 4 of us on the ride, along with a guide. We felt the effects of the altitude once we set off… the short climb of no more than 500 meters had us gasping for breath! Maybe we should have given ourselves a few days to acclimatise before taking on any physical activity!

We arranged to head out in the evening with Steph (or was it Clare…?), who we met in the hostel. Mexican at Locots was on the menu and it turned out to be a lively evening, with an interesting 90´s dance soundtrack, on repeat about every hour. Food was great, and some of the drinks were memorable as you can see by the cocktail here! More pictures of the night are in the Sucre album.

On Sunday morning, at 7.30am, we remembered that we had agreed to get up early and take the local bus to the market at Tarabuco, with Steph. The journey involved catching a local bus to the place where all the locals catch their transport to the market, a further 64kms away. The choice is bus, minivan, truck or even a taxi… we managed to barter with a taxi driver who wanted to fill his back seat and paid 8 bolivianos each, 1 more than the bus! It’s a good job we didn’t want to take any luggage though, as the boot was full already, with 2 people and a number of sacks of goods for the market!

After an hour in the car, passing all the buses and trucks, we arrived into Tarabuco a little earlier than expected, with the market almost to ourselves! The pictures in the Tarabuco folder tell the story better than we can. Click here to see them.

We decide to stay on in Sucre for some more time, and took private Spanish lessons for a week. The fact that the chocolate festival was due to commence at the end of the week had nothing to do with the decision! Between our lessons we saw more of Sucre, including a number of Menu del Dia establishments where we hoped to get a cheap lunch. More often than not, we ended up getting stung by either being served up something that wasn’t on the cheap menu, or by the price not beiung advertised clearly (i.e. paying tourist prices!)

On Thursday, we rescheduled our Spanish lesson to start at 7.30am so that we could head out on a walk to the infamous ‘7 Waterfalls’. As we were leaving to go to the waterfalls, the friendly lady on reception caught our attention as she informed us that as of Friday, we wouldn’t be able to stay any longer as they had reserved our room for someone else! Without going into detail (we’ll post the tripadvisor review of the hostel here when we write it), we had been evicted due to the terrible management of the hostel not having any sort of common sense – they had double booked 10 rooms for the coming weekend! We prompty packed our bags and moved to another hostel, not wanting to give the owners of the Cruz de Popayan any more money!

Back to the waterfalls...The instructions were clear enough – take a bus to Alta Delicias and walk for 20 mins from there to the waterfalls. Three buses later and no closer to the waterfalls, we settled for these pictures of the city of Sucre from an alternative angle, along with a pig to show the diverse wildlife.

Due to Bolivia Belly, Sam spent Friday around the hostel, while Ady went out in search of a couple of essentials (lip balm, cash, dictionary and a hair dryer!). Mission 1 accomplished – lip balm purchased and applied, next step – find a cheap hairdryer. After a while of searching, Ady bumped into Steph and Michelle in the street, who started laughing upon seeing Ady. The cherry lip balm had turned Adys lips bright red and he didn’t have a clue. After a nightmare at the bank when the cash machine crashed and all pocket dictionaries being bigger than any pocket, it was time to give in.

Friday night was Chocolate and Salsa night at Locots, as part of the Festival of Chocolate. Sam made it out for the start of the night, but as you can see from the photos it was left to Ady, Steph and Michelle to show the Bolivians how to Salsa!

On Saturday, the Chocolate Festival was in full swing and the city was also starting to celebrate Sucre’s Day of Independence. Marching bands were pounding the streets again, and it seemed that you couldn’t turn a corner without seeing another band!

Sunday 25th – Sucre’s Day of Indepedance. We were woken by the sound of marching bands at 8am! This country is both crazy and obsessed! The chocolate festival was also still in swing and we ended up taking a walk out to see how the city would be celebrating. A fruitless hike up to the Cafe Mirador (it was closed) left us looking for a cheap eat. We stumbled upon a Sausage fest, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but ended up costing us a fortune! Tourist prices were applied to our lunch, it’s a shame that people do this but you get used to it!

Time to move on, and a private taxi shared with some people we met turned out to be a no go-er as the price was doubled due to the ‘holiday’. We headed to the bus station, and took a bus, which cost us a fraction of the price. After a journey involving just the one puncture, we arrived in Potosi – the highest city of it’s size in the world, breathless but ready for some underground mine action.