Sucre - Nice, I guess

Somehow I ended up spending a week in this town and I am still not sure why. I suppose part of it was letting my shell shocked body recover from the wild time it had in Potosi, part of it was a little R&R after hopping from place to place with 3 days or less per location for a few weeks, part of it was to get more used to the altitude which was still a nagging problem.

Still, this really wasn't a very exciting town. Charming, yes. Pretty, absolutely. But fun? Weeelll....

The road to the Mirador

Though this is the officially the capital of Bolivia, only the Supreme court actually resides here, the president and congreso are in La Paz. The whole town is a vision of white walls and terracotta roofs, which you can get a great view of from the Mirador de la Recoleta, a nunnery perched on top of a steep hill.

The central market is good fun, not the biggest market in town but a good spot to sit down with a newspaper while about 20 ladies vy for the chance to make you a delicious fruit juice or smoothie for about $1.50. The fruit selection is amazing and everything is delicious. I gorged myself on mangoes, bananas, papaya, avocados and pineapple to offset the Bolivian diet of potatoes, meat and grease.

Fruit mamas!

Beyond that...I mean, there's some cool museums including the world's largest collection of dinosaur footprints, but really not that much to do. Most backpackers stop here a long while as it's a great place to take spanish lessons, but beyond that there wasn't that much on offer, and the nightlife is pretty tame.

I suppose you need a long stay every once in a while, I just wish I could have picked a more exciting spot! No matter, next stop is sunny Cochabamba on the way to La Paz.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Huarmey - Mud, Sweat and Volunteers

Image
Mariciela in what used to be her bedroom After hearing so much about volunteering from other friends on the road, I decided to give up a couple of weeks to volunteer in a small town badly hit by flooding in March this year. So after a 23 hour bus to Lima, a night in the capital and another 5 hour bus up the coast, I found myself at the scene of one of the most catastrophic disasters to hit Peru in decades. Around the time I was flying into South America, most of the coastal provinces of Peru, normally a desert area, were subject to more rain than they would normally get in a year in a less than week. A lot of significant damage was done in the north of the country which is where most of the disaster response has occurred, but next to the small but important provincial town of Huarmey, the normally very placid local river became a raging torrent that sent flood water as high as 2 metres in two separate floods a few days apart. Before... The organisation I work for, All ...
Read more

Chicken Bus Fear - Should You Catch One?

To get around Central America without wheels of your own, you have two options: chicken buses, or tourist shuttles. Many travellers are nervous of chicken buses and choose to pay very high prices for shuttles, but you don't need to! Here is my list of reasons for shaking off the chicken bus fear and taking the wild ride with the locals: - Chicken buses are cheap! The general price for an inter-city chicken bus is about $1-2 per hour of driving. For example, the bus between Leon and Managua that takes around 2 hours generally costs 50-60 Cordoba or $2, while the minimum shuttle price is $9 for the same amount of time! - There's snacks on chicken buses! Nicaragua in particular has a thriving network of people dedicated to selling fresh food on chicken buses. Whether you want some fresh baked corn bread, donuts with treacle sauce, coconut bread, hot tamales, pineapple pastry popcorn, sweets or just some fruit and veg, the chicken buses have it all. The vendors board the bus ...
Read more

La Vida Nica - Chicken Buses

Image
I thought I would end my blog's long hiatus by doing a few posts about the 6 months I spent in Central America, most of that in Nicaragua. First up in the series is the iconic method of public transport in all Central American countries: the Chicken Bus! These types of buses run inter-city and suburban transport routes across Central America. The name comes from the habit of some locals to take their farm animals with them, and the name has stuck in the tourist community. It isn't as common as people make it out to be - I think in over 100 chicken bus rides I only saw a handful of chickens and a few boxes of chicks. That said, it does always make you giggle when you hear the box above your head tweeting as you drive. To run the bus you need at least two people: the chofer  (driver) and at least one  ayudante  (assistant). The driver's job is simple: navigating the route in as little time as possible, usually achieved through driving that would make Vin Diesel ...
Read more