Sucre - Week 34

6th to 11th May

Our first sights of rural Bolivian life...

We arrivived in Sucre after a straightforward bus trip from Potosi. It was instantly a welcome break after the altitude of Potosi. Sucre is at about 2500m instead of 4000m and so it was a fair bit warmer too. After checking a few hostels we decided on Hostal San Francisco which was lots of good rooms set around a pretty courtyard. Sucre is actually the official capital of Bolivia with only administration being carried out in La Paz. It is a lovely colonial town with lots of pretty white-washed buildings and churches.

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Our first evening we met up with Steve and two Ozzies, Diddy and Nicole, and got very drunk on pitchers of beer in Joyride cafe. The ozzie girls were very funny shelias, as you would expect with a name like Diddy, the next hangover day wasn`t so funny though...


Monday wasn't very productive but Katie did manage to enrol into some more Spanish lessons starting the next day for 4 days. James had spotted a gym and was not interested in the lessons any more so he declined... We settled down nicely to a week in Sucre, sightseeing (and homework for Katie) in the morning and school/gym in the afternoon, and lovely cheap bolivian meals in the evening.

On the Tuesday morning, we took a tour round the Casa Libertad with a very informative guide. He told us all about Sucre and Bolivia's history and how all fitted in with the general revolution from the Spanish in the early 19th century. He also told us about the new draft constitution and the battle going on between La Paz and Sucre at the moment for all the administration etc to be brought back to Sucre, the 'real' capital.


Sucre seems to be home to every kind of demonstration you can think of. When we arrived, there was a demonstration in the square about healthcare, then the next day the taxi drivers were demonstrating about the type of fuel they were being forced to used and the big one was on Thursday when practically the whole city was out in the square to show their solidarity for Sucre being reinstated as the administrative capital of Bolivia. Everyone had fireworks, there were marching bands, stages set up for speaches and lots of shouting!

On Wednesday we went to see some fossilised dinosaur footprints just out of town on the 'Dinotruck? (!) which were amazing. We were a bit disappointed that we couldn't get very close but it was fascinating to see real live dinosaur footprints - crazy! James was also very excited by all the dinosaur models in the park. We thought we were 5 years old again!

The prints were found in a cement works quarry and clearly show many types of dinosaur footprints. They are obviously millions of years old when the rock face was horizontal and the muddy bed of a lake where the dinosaurs used to come to drink.

After much faffing about, we managed to book flights for Saturday to La Paz and then on to Rurrenabaque on Sunday to go to the jungle. We were not keen on an overnight bus from Sucre to La Paz which was the only other way of getting there. The flight to La Paz with Aerosur was very comfortable, landing at over 4000m. The area surrounding the airport was a bit desolate and we were not sure where this city of 1.2 million people actually was. We took a taxi into the town centre which ended up being one of the most spectacular taxi rides of the trip to date. You drop down from the flat altiplano into a bowl crammed with buildings surrounded by snow capped mountains over 6000m high.

The airport to the left and city in the hole on the right!