Advertisement
Published: August 9th 2007
Edit Blog Post
The long awaited "break" from travelling, finally, we got to a point where we just had to unpack the bag, hang everything up in a wardrobe (it´s the simple things that matter here), and just not move..... Sucre. I don´t think we could have picked a better city for it. It´s big enough to have decent facilities, but not too big (like Santa Cruz) to have way too much anoying traffic. That, and it´s pretty too, most buildings in blinding white, and world heritage listed! Last but not least, it´s cheap as chips!!!
We stayed in quite a lovely hotel the first 2 nights, pre booked for us, and even that wasn´t too expensive for starters. Decided to use the first full day there to look for long term accomodation, and also for a good enough school to learn more spanish. More or less succesful in both cases that day, even though we took our time booking everything in.
Our place of residence for almost 3 weeks was the Hostal San Francisco, not a hostel by western standards, but more a large pousada style hotel, which looks very authentic from the outside, and has very basic (but clean) rooms.
Our choice for spanish classes was the
Bolivian Spanish School in Sucre, near the Parque Bolivar. For US$5 per person per hour, we´re getting private (one-on-one) classes here, and are also invited to join in for local activities like Walley ( strange mix of volleyball, badminton, soccer and squash, plaid in a squash like court) and karaoke. Yes, Bolivians are addicted to this as well! Mind you, having a few strong drinks helps build the atmosphere!
What else, well, part of the decicion to stay at the San Francisco was that it did not have a proper kitchen we could use. So most meals would have to be eaten elsewhere (i.e. restaurants and pubs). Considering the extremely low price of food here, this should not be an issue! 😊 Also, they serve "breakfast" after 8.30, which is when we start classes, so again, we´d eat out most mornings, but even that would sometimes set us back US$2 for the 2 of us !
And yes, you did read that right, we are:
a) getting up before 7am to be in school at 8.30am
b) going back to school
c) doing our homework most afternoons...... On weekends, we
would usually sleep in a bit. First full weekend we also did a motorcycle tour around town. Again, the scenery, as we saw it driving in, was great. Our joint transport for the day was a 4-stroke, 250cc 😞 Honda dirt bike. And no, it did not get up the hill that smoothly, and considering the passenger footpegs were on the rear weel suspension, it also wasn´t all too comfortable for Bin😞. Either way, a little blog entry here for our own motorcycle diaries!
Restaurants: What can we say, but at the prices theycharge here (even gringo restaurants), you can´t be bothered cooking! OK, we made afew salads, and had a few breakkies in our room, but the rest was eaten out. We´d really be pusing ourselves to spend more than 10US on a dinner sometimes, I think we only passed that mark twice, and once included a bottle of wine, shared with some Briz/Ozzie travel friends. Even more important, the food is just bloody great here ! And to top it all of, there are plenty of vegetarian restaurants here as well, so Bin´s been in veggie heaven here!
Hairdresser: Had to be done, my hair was
getting out of order, so went in for the corner barber and asked for the full treatment, cut and shave!! Only one mistake, should´ve put my lenses in !! The guy was very short. First worry, he was using a very large gas burner/torch to clean the razor. Second..... he put his very dirty glasses on, and we´re not talking a low prescription here. Third worry.... he was short, and the chair was relatively high. Took only a minute or 5, and it felt like a sheep being shorn, with plenty of hair falling to mother earth! The result isn´t too bad, and possibly better than my cut in Buenos Aires. The shave was an experience as well, in particular when he used an old fashioned cologne dispenser(the ones that wistle) to blow the good stuff straight up my nose! After which he rubbed it into my skin with a towel... ooooohhhhh.....
Post office: Has been a treat in Santa Cruz as well, we´ll upload some pictures as well. the fun part here was that the little man was all to willing to help me out with all sorts of stuff. the shipment from Sta Cruz made it in
time, by the way. We also paid 0.50USD for the 2 of us to enjoy the views from the roof of the post office! These people know what service is ! (unlike migration).
What else, we´re in our last week now, and have done a few walks through the white city. All lovely and white, and the weather has been great with blue skies most days (or part thereof). Canadian Jen has arrived, and we´ll head out for a day hike on our last day here (tomorrow 20-4-07), and that promises more great vistas and walks. We´ll update you on that later as well.
We´ve also booked a few things ahead, so we´re not going to get bored after the Spanish class overload (heads are still spinning, need to digest all of that). Potosi first, at about 4000m altitude that should be interesting. After that the salt flats near Uyuni, with the lagunas and geysers, and after that to La Paz ! All exciting things for us to look forward to.
Hope you´re all well! Don´t forget to leave an occasional comment or message on this website !!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.38s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 71; dbt: 0.3271s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb