Sucre

The Santa Cruz airport was a small military airport, and we all found quite strange they ran domestic flights. The flight itself was only half an hour, and once in the air there was very little descent due to Sucre's high altitude in relation to Santa Cruz. It was so short and smooth, that Tom fell asleep as soon as we boarded and woke up dazed and confused to learn we were in Sucre.

We collected our bags from a tiny singular conveyor belt -which was potentially powered by guinea pigs- and took a glance over at the arrivals section. Towering over the native tiny, patterned Bolivians, stood a gangster looking, hoody wearing, block shaped Colombian unit. Usually we would probably avoid such a potentially intimidating gentleman, but as he eagerly waved a G adventures sign and offered to take our bags, we knew this must be our new guide Kike!

We boarded a 60s style hippie wagon and set off on our merry little way to our hotel and Kike introduced himself properly to the group. As we left the surrounding area of the airport, it was instantly apparent that Bolivia suffered more deprivation than we had initially thought, and it was going to be a much different experience to Brazil.

Kike had told us a brief history of Sucre, the old Spanish colonial town that had once led the way for the South American education system and was home to the first university founded in the whole of South America.



Despite it's faded white paint and tatty edges, you could tell this was once a place of high importance and great wealth. Although Sucre had suffered a slight fall from grace since that time, it still held it's antique colonial charm. It was also interesting to view the differences between itself and Paraty, two colonial towns of similar age but one affected by the Spanish advance and one not.

We arrived to the hotel which was comfortable and actually quite quaint. This would be home for the next 3 days which seemed like a real luxury in our current hectic schedule. Due to a local governmental election being the following day, Kike explained that nothing would be open and any activities planned would be off the cards. The whole town was literally in shut down. However, every South American cloud has a silver lining, and Kike came to the rescue. He had some knowledge of Sucre from his time as a guide and said he would take us for a walk around the town and explain to us it's historical background and to see the sights. As a result of the election, Kike advised us that there could potentially be no where open to eat that night and definitely no alcohol available. Because of this he took us to the nearest supermarket and we all stocked up on food for lunch and dinner the next day. There was no self catering option at our hotel so it mainly consisted of instant noodles and a range of breads cheeses and meats.

 After this we went to joyride tour operators! This was to get an idea of what activities there was available to do in the area, so we could book in advance for the day after the election. Kike had warned us on their unusual and quite lack lustre sales technique and he wasn't wrong. They were pretty uninspiring about the activities on offer, but none the less offered enough information to hook us eager beavers to book on one. As a group with the Inca trail looming, we decided to do a hike and take advantage of the high altitude to get some practice in and get some South American dirt on our boots. The trek also had the bonus of walking through a mountainous crater and seeing some dinosaur footprints, so we booked that up to do for a couple of days time.

The joy ride place had a restaraunt attached so we went up there for food, and Kike managed to wangle a bottle of rum from the owner. This just set the standard of how Kike's trip would be. We went back to our hotel and played cards with our rums in hand, and ended up staying awake till the early hours of the morning. We woke up with sore heads and embarked on Kike's town tour. We were all feeling the rum, however Kike was also suffering, so he did well to give us a knowledgable history of the beautiful town. It was palm Sunday so a lot of locals were carrying around the traditional palms, but made with so much detail that the Bolivians live up to.

Towards the end of Kike's tour, we headed up some large, steep streets which were a little difficult in the heat. When we got to the top we entered a beautiful square which was filled with people, and gave fantastic panoramic views over the whole city.

We were so lucky with the weather, as the blue skies contrasted nicely with the red brick roofing. Up here we found a few stalls, and bought ourselves some souvenirs, that cost us next to nothing.

After our personalised town tour, we had a bit of free time to chill out so we all capitalised on the free wifi, and generally just caught up with our selves, our bags and sorted out all the boring bits like washing dirty clothes and re packing our bulging bags, which we were becoming quite good at. That night we went to a pub and ate a Mexican platter bigger than our heads, the perfect hangover cure.

The following day was the day we would go on our hike to see the dinosaur footprints. We turned up early and met our guide who was called Grover -but liked to be referred to as Grubby-, and set out on the supposedly hour and a half drive up to the crater. After an incredibly bumpy three hour drive, we realised we may have been mis-sold our trip. The actual hike was fairly hard work, with the sun beating down on us making it a struggle, as well as our first real taste of high altitude. Grubby showed us some fossilised shark poo and different coloured sands.



 The views were quite spectacular over the crater and valleys of mountains, and the beautiful weather made it even better.



We eventually made it to the dinosaur footprints which were slightly underwhelming after such a huge build up to them. Needless to say, Grubby was very informative about the huge holes in the rock, and explained how the mud that was once soft was now solid.







 We made our way back to the coach, and trekked for overall about 3 hours. On our bumpy journey back to Sucre, we picked up three locals who needed a ride to the city. On the way back down, we stopped in at a typical Bolivian household, where a woman showed us how they make the traditional blankets Bolivians can be seen wearing most of the time. The process of watching how much detail and time is put into the blankets made us realise just how cheap they sold their goods for, after all the work they put in.

That night, we went to a steak house which Kike highly recommened. It was a bit posher than some other places we had been, but the steaks were really tasty and actually cooked to the standard we asked unlike some other places we went, which would ask, but then still over cook it anyway. We heard drumming and banging in the street and saw a parade going past the restaurant so ran down to take pictures and videos. We were excited to have caught one, but it turns out that Boilivians have a parade for every single occasion, so these street blocking marches would become a real annoyance later on in our trip. 

The following day we would be leaving Sucre and going to Potosi, another town that had fallen from grace.