The end of the year

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We finished our last week of school for the year on an interesting note... I told my kids to pee in their desks and James called one of his students a 'female dog'! Not on purpose... we inserted a few wrong letters when trying to speak spanish. I wanted to get my kids to clean their desks and James was attempting to tell one of his students that she was lazy. My kids thought it was hilarious and wanted to pee straight away. But all up, it was a good end to the year and end to my teaching stint at Highlands... we had a fiesta and played lots of games.

A few days after school had finished we thought we should explore more of Bolivia... so we jumped into our jeep and headed south. Our first stop was Cochabamba - where once again we spent half of our time trying to fix the jeep - but we also had a great time with some American friends (Scotty & Lisa) and a Bolivian family.

From there we headed further south to Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia. The drive took 7 hours on mostly cobblestone and gravel roads. We discovered just how much of Bolivia is uninhabited (or sparsely habited). The main mission in driving was to avoid donkeys, pigs and goats (so there must have been some people tucked away somewhere). I´m so, so, so glad that the jeep did not break down and that we arrived before dark. (Though we did nearly lose our exhaust).

Sucre is a nice city.... it has lots of colonial buildings and churches. We went through the building where Bolivia signed its declaration of independence from Spanish rule and there we got a concise Bolivian history. Sucre also has the world´s largest exhibition of dinosaur prints (they say there´s 5000 prints). I secretly wondered whether some sneaky person had planted the prints... but they look pretty legit and apparently UNESCO is coming to the site in March. Now on to Potosi!

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Photos

Beggars at the gas station
They were so cute...

A shoeshiner
There were many shoeshiners in Sucre's main plaza... they weren't worried whether your shoes were leather or not.

The courtyard at Casa de Libertad
The place where Bolivia got its independence (signed the documents)

Some more beggars
These guys danced and it was hard to get them to stand still for the photo

Dino tracks
If you look very closely you can see a mother and a baby dino's tracks