Sucre

Did I mention how much we love Bolivia????? We are totally smitten with Bolivia, and we are trying to figure out how to return for a month next summer to study spanish and volunteer. Really we love Bolivia.

The city of Sucre can best be described as white. It is unofficially the capital of Bolivia, it is where the supreme court resides as well as the main Bolivian university. There is a city rule that buildings within a certain range of the city plaza must be painted white or face a serious fine. This is apparently true for the base of most of the trees in the city center as well.

We arrived in the city at about 5 pm in the afternoon. We are now officially experts at arriving in a city and getting a crazy taxi to the city center. My spanish has gotten proficent enough for me to chat with the cab drivers now, and this guy had a lot of questions. We have gathered that not too many Americans travel here and people are full of questions about America. The cab driver recommended his favorite salteña place and hotel, which he felt the need to escort us to (think he was getting a bit of money for the referral). We settled in, and went immediately to the Joy Ride Cafe. The cafe is justl like something you would find in most colllege towns, complete with an "American Breakfast" and yogurt with granola. We decided that we need to move and booked a 6-8 hour mountain bike tour to a town called Yotola (sp). Then we wandered the streets.

Besides being white the city itself is quite quaint. The streets narrow and there are wooden sign posts hanging outside the shops, the churches are incredible, it is said that there are more churches in Sucre than anywhere else. It was here that we began to see the faces of the indigenous populations. It is also here that we have begun to witness the tradtional religious beliefs(complete with multipul dieties) living side by side with Catholicism. I have been amazed at how the facial structure of the indigenous population is similar to the structure of many of the faces that I saw in Nepal.

Sucre is also the place to purchase sweaters, weavings, scarfs, finger puppets and all sorts of handmade goods. It was hard for us not to want to purchase every nice sweater and scarf that we walked past.

We have officially given up not trying to get sick from the food because it generally means that we do not try the food that looks the best to us, so now we eat anything that looks like it might taste good. This is wonderful because it means that we have tasted amazing foods and been introduced to wonderful people who are all too happy to talk to us and ask us questions. Our first night we ate at the market. There were not many choices, everyone was selling the samething......rice, meat, fried chorizo, fried egg, fried potatoes and grilled veggies. We settled into eat and realized that we did not have anything to drink, and just as Mondo began to look around, this lady at the far end of the room began waving at him wildly, apprently she was the juice lady.

We woke up the next morning, checked into a larger but less expensive hostal and went to meet our guide Charlie for our mountain biking adventure. The bikes we ok, they provided us with helemts and lunch. Our fearless guide, Charlie was great, he wanted to improve his english and he wanted to help me improve my spanish. In Charlie's spare time, he plays the guitar in a band, spends all of his money on fixing his Honda Civic (which he likes to drive around the city plaza) and is studying at the university, oh and does not plan of getting married until he is 30. He was great, he educated us about the sceenery and the area. The ride takes almost 8 hours because you are guaranteed at minimum 5 flat tires and tubes for the tires that have been fixed so many times it is almost not worth using them anymore. But the best part of the ride was the end!! We get to Yotola and there we go to this lady doña Neena's home where she has made Chicha a local maize drink. She was the cutest, sweetest little lady that I have ever met in my life. She was tiny and I made a joke that she was like a female Yoda! She chatted with us for about 20 minutes and told me we should return again next year. We rode back to the city, had a late dinner and crashed fully exhausted into our bed.

We spent one more full day in Sucre, most of it at the indigenous museum which was incredible. We got to see women weaving and learned all about the Jalq'a and Tarabuceños populations. We ended up purchasing a weaving (because as most of you know, we really needed more stuff to hang on the walls of the home we do not have!), ate one last dinner and packed our stuff.

This morning we left for Potosi, either the highest or second highest city in the world. We intended to take a bus but there were no tickets so we took a cab, yet another prayer to the taxi god. We arrived safely at the taxi station and got in another jalopy and drove to the city center where this very helpful woman found us a hotel, got us a city tour, a tour of the mint, scheduled a mine tour for tomorrow and booked bus tickets to Uyuni and a tour of the Salar de Uyuni.

The air is thin, the people continue to be beautiful and we are having a blast!!! I will write about our adventures here in Potosi in a few days!!! Miss you all!!

Apprently some people are having trouble with the links so what I am doing now is bolding words, I suggest that you do a google search with this word, generally the wikipedia link is pretty good!!