Sucre, We Are Here
Sucre is basically a hop skip and a jump from Potosi, and it was nice to have a very short travel time, about 2 hours, on paved roads. Coming into Sucre, is like driving into the Bolivian twilight zone. The surrounding hillsides are green and lush, there are palm trees and cows, and off in the distance you can see the white washed buildings with that unmistakable colonial Spanish appeal. Red tiled roofs, and churches complete with many bells dot nearly every block. No dust.
The attire of the people has also completely transformed. Very few people are now dressed in the traditional Bolivian get-up, with the llama (or alpaca, if those really exist, still no evidence…) wraps, skirts, shirts and braided hair. Instead I now see people in suits, jeans, and designer sunglasses. The climate is now reminiscent of Los Angeles, California. For the first time all trip I changed into some summer gear and was wishing I had brought along flip flops.
And we have dropped to around 7,500 feet in altitude, and boy can you feel the difference. I can run! I can breath! Stairs: check. Dancing: well, close enough, check! For those of you comparing, Sucre is still a good several thousand feet higher than Denver, but its all relative, after spending more than a week with a third of my normal amount of oxygen.
The hotel, Hostel Independencia, we have for our stay in Sucre is actually coming onto qualifying as nice, which is such a welcome relief. It is also only ¼ of a block off the main square, which is the granddaddy of all squares thus far. Its beautiful, surrounded by immense seventeenth century buildings, full of flowers and park benches. The surrounding area boasts a movie theatre, and restaurants and bars galore.
Starvation forced us to find a mid day snack and the quatro amigos found this beautiful courtyard bar/restaurant just around the corner, up the hill. The streets here are still, like every city so far, running up and down a mountain. How great this place was. MD (a.k.a. Aaron, whom I’ve started to refer to as Mother Duck in my head, because we have a tendency to a)do whatever he tells us and b)follow him in a single file straight line around town, due to the crazy narrow sidewalks), has decided to make Hannah and I do the ordering and asking for directions, as he is attempting to improve our Spanish. “Yo quiero taco?” I say. Ha. Shows you, we’ll be eating tacos from here on out. I end with “s’il vous plait.” I can’t shake it. My brain was fried by high school French. Hannah keeps answering in Italian, so its apparently a universal problem.
Since it had been an enormous 12 or 13 hours since our last beer, we ordered up a bunch along with the tacos and the guys made plans to do some mountain biking for tomorrow. They picked something titled “danger cycling” or equivalent. The basic idea is they drive you up to the top of a mountain to a road that has the cliffs on either side, and you ride down, avoiding buses, rocks, and cliffs all while going as fast as humanly possible. Then they drive you back up and you do it all over again. Fun fun. MD and Mark were on their own.
It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon, hanging out in a sunny courtyard. The evening followed with a little more Bolivian music, but I think most of us were pan piped-out so we headed to a Dutch owned bar “Joy Ride”. Hurrahh for Joyride. This must be THE gringo hangout of Bolivia. People were here from all over, Spain, France, Brazil, US, UK, Switzerland, Israel. I know it’s not authentic, I know it’s not supposed to be the reason that you travel, but I have to say, it is the coolest thing to be in bar with like minded travelers from all over the world! 15 seconds in we met a really nice guy, Pascal, from Switzerland, who had just come back from a 2 week boat trip to Antarctica. He looked like, and especially sounded like Roger Federer. Such a nice guy, and so enthusiastic for just about everything. So far I have met 3 Swiss persons, and grew up with one (my stepmom) and they all get a 1000% approval rating. Anyhow, Pascal was now spending the next 6 weeks in Bolivia learning Spanish at one of the Spanish schools in town, and then he was travelling throughout the rest of South America, for the next 3-4 months! How great would that be? So many people are RTW, taking a year or more. Makes me green. Hannah herself is on the last leg of a 4 month adventure. One of these days…..
So, the group expanded to be the cinco amigos for the night. At some point, maybe 2 am or so, the guys Aaron, Mark and Pascal (though it turns out that Aaron and Mark didn’t know Pascal’s name, so they were calling him Dude all night), left to go elsewhere, while Hannah and myself stayed at good ol’ Joyride, which promptly closed its doors to whomever was still in there and became a dance extravaganza.Hannah, with her sexy moves, attracted some permanent marker wielding locals, and by the time we made it out of there we both were covered in permanent red ink. It was like highschool all over again. Another aside: it is quite a feat to look sexy when you are wearing your backpacking clothes and hiking boots, and boogie-ing down is the one thing that actually is easier to do in heels, or at least the result is more appealing. Regardless, light skinned people are considered gorgeous by local standards, so we got along fine, and made quite the spectacle. It was 3:30am when we got home, Mark (and I assume Aaron and Dude) were still out, but our ink covered selves made it the 1.5 blocks back to the hotel, via a 4.5 block ‘shortcut,’ and passed out. We had outdone ourselves, easily beating Cacho/Potosi local night and cave hostel night.
Tags: Bolivia, Hostel Independencia, Joy Ride, Party, Sucre, Tag Index
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