Sucre, another white city

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sucre is beautiful. only a 2 or 3 hour taxi ride from potosí, you drive into the town and pass by its white buildings and amazing central square.

good things. daniel, the swiss, and i visited the casa de la libertad, the country´s old parliament. you see, the capital of bolivia used to be only in sucre, but as la paz grew in stature, it steadily sucked away all the parts of the central government until sucre was left as only the judicial capital. bolivia is the world´s only country with 2 capitals. the casa de la libertad is very interesting, though i won´t bore you with details. they have a very bitter exhibit explaining the war bolivia fought against chile when they were left with no access to the sea. bolivians are still extremely upset about this fact, which occurred about 120 years ago. they hate chile.

had some beers in the square and met up with some peace corps volunteers who work in and around sucre. they were awesome guides and helped us to finish several beers. after dancing at a club with terrible (read non-latin) music and talking with an ugly girl who refused to keep a conversation going, i was done for the night.

the next day we visited a textile museum with a pcv we had met the previous night, alisa. a textile museum might not sound like shits and giggles, but it was fucking cool. a good weaving measuring a foot by 3 feet might take a woman 3 months to make, working every day. they meticulously move strings back and forth for about 5 minutes, preparing to lay a single fine line of string. they then repeat the process, laying the weaving string by string creating an intricate pattern of designs. you really have to see it to appreciate it. well, this pcv, alisa, works with weavers of these tapestrys and sold me one for about 80 dollars. yea, fucking expensive, but very cool.

the next day was a trip to the weekly tarabuco market to see more textiles for sale and see a catholic mass and baptism in quechua language. i didn´t understand a word of it but it was cool anyhow.

i parted with daniel, my swiss companion for uyuni, potosí and sucre, and hopped on my bus cama to meet back up with jason and chrissy in samaipata. stay tuned.

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Photos

Shoe shine boys
we met these kids in the street and they taught me how to speak quechua while i taught them some chinese i know (wink wink patricio).

Supreme Court building
This is the only reason they still refer to sucre as a capital of bolivia.

Pig gutting at the Tarabuco market
Tripe anyone?

Me with pcv alisa and her host dad and godson
She was there to baptise the little kid in a quecha mass. i understood nothing.