After catching a scenic forty minute flight from Santa Cruz, my first stop in Bolivia was Sucre.A place often referred to as the White City due to its abundance of well kept white buildings. Arriving here from Brazil was a great relief as I was once again able to understand what people were saying when they were talking to me! The initial plan was to stay here for three days, however this plan soon changed when the Bolivians decided to do a bloquea outside of Sucre proving it somewhat difficult to leave!I ended up staying a week,although I guess there are worse places you could get stuck in. After a week there, it almost began to feel like home!.
My afternoons were usually spent wandering around the city which was nice, plenty of little shops to browse in or there was the local market which had an array of fresh fruit and vegetables amongst other items being sold.Probably not the best place if you're a vegetarian as there's a lot of meat around the place, or come to think of it,probably not the best place if you're a meat eater either. The meat looked questionable after seeing a fair amount of flies circulating around it!
One morning I took a trip to the Parque Cretaceous to see a selection of dinosaur footprints that had been discovered in a cement quarry.You're only able to view these from a distance but they were still visible and it was very interesting.
There seemed to be a strong German and Dutch presence amongst the restsurants in Sucre, so if you speak Spanish, German or Dutch, Sucre would probably be the perfect place for you!During my time there I sampled the not so local cuisine at quite a few restaurants, some better than others. Cafe Amsterdam was a big let down. I ordered the dinner of the day and what i got was one lonely looking sausage on top of a heap of mashed potatoes, carrots and onions, not the most enticing meal but mine probably wasn't the worst. A sprinkling of nacho crumbs on a small tortilla was hardly dinner either (poor Tasha!)
The 1st May was Dia del Trabajo or Labour Day in Bolivia so it was a national holiday and as it's South America of course there were going to be celebrations! A parade with women dressed in their traditional colourful attire, men in suits, floats and a very loud band took to the streets around the plaza and put on a performance. I stopped to watch it for a while, it was quite entertaining especially seeing all of the people dancing in sync with one another then swinging some type of rattle instrument above their heads at the same time!
As I was stuck in Sucre it meant I was there for my birthday.Thankfully I met some great people during my extended stay there who celebrated it with me. It was a good evening with a few added surprises, the biggest probably being Tasha and myself managed to stay awake after 9pm! I'm blaming the altitude!
Fortunately I'd managed to book a flight to Uyuni for the following day, which was not so fortunate as it was my birthday and I experienced the worst flight ever! When waiting to board the plane I thought it looked quite small but thought it must just be because I'm looking from a distance, this wasn't the case! In fact it was an eighteen seater that you had to bend to get in to, it was small! The one plus side was the seats were in single file so no potential mid air nappers mistaking your shoulder for a pillow! Once in the air you could feel every bump of turbulence which wasn't good for the stomach. I had my first experience of feeling travel sick to the point where I couldn't even look out of the window.Touch down in Uyuni couldn't have come sooner!The flight was bearable only for the reason that I knew I was headed for an adventure; Salar de Uyuni - The biggest salt flats in the world!
