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Published: June 16th 2009
The travelling refrigerator
After saying my goodbyes to those in my group who were leaving us in La Paz, I set off together with the rest of the group and some new additions to Sucre, the Legislative capital of Bolivia. It was going to be my first overnight bus experience in Bolivia and not one that I was looking forward too, for two reasons. Firstly, I hate overnight buses and Secondly, because I really hate over night buses.
We boarded the bus, settled in and waited for the ordeal to start. I had learned from previous experience, with lice infested blankets, not to use the one provided to us on the bus to Sucre and immediately placed it in the overhead compartment. However, it didn’t take long for me to realise that they were there for a reason. I was riding in a travelling refrigerator. Five layers of clothing, hat, scarf, gloves - that is what I wore to make it through the night, together with the blanket (which turned out to be lice free and never made it anywhere near my neck).
Bleary eyed & bushy haired we arrived in Sucre and made our way to
Anyone for maple syrup margaritas?
Can you imagine, they didnt taste very niceour hostel. Set in a traditional old Spanish Colonial, it had a central courtyard with a really big overflowing tree, very large airy (meaning freezing cold) rooms and was within walking distance to the main square. We dumped our bags and set off to the main square for breakfast at one of the local cafes - ‘Joyride Cafe’. I mention this because as it turned out, this would be of significance to my memory of Sucre as I very rarely left it during the duration of my stay....
Rather conveniently, on the day that we arrived we were lucky enough to be there during the 2009 Codasur Sucre Rally. It started off with motorbikes, followed by vintage cars and lastly by rally cars. Being allowed to run across the road in between the cars driving past was quite adrenalin pumping. That and watching the cars as they drove through the finish line, whilst almost being able to touch them, was deafeningly amazing
Later that day after, our car rally experience, we treated ourselves to a very liquid lunch, which continued to deteriorate towards dinner. We discovered that although pancakes & maple syrup were a superb mid-afternoon snack, the
newly created ‘maple syrup margarita’ did not necessarily rate as a very good cocktail combination. What more could you say about very strong, very alcoholic, $3 cocktails.
The following day and somewhat recovered from our very long drinking session, we opted for an afternoon of quad-biking along the hills of Sucre. It was my first ever attempt at quad-biking and zooming along, trying to manouver the bike, whilst hoping that I wouldn’t fall off the side of the cliff or intake any more dirt from the bikes in front of me became one of my never ending quests throughout the ride. We made it back from our run covered in more dirt than what was left on the roads and decided that our fog of hunger was best served by going immediately to lunch, without stopping for a scrub & clean (other than dousing myself in the bathroom sink in the cafe....Mmmmm!!!). Satisfied, after having one of the best pepper steaks I’ve had in a while, I went back to the hostel, washed & scrubbed and lazed around content to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the day.....and night!
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