Sucre, Otra Vez

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Hola Mis Amigos!

I believe I left off on arrival in Sucre after another Bolivian bus journey that would have changed my opinion of Bolivian buses if it weren´t four hours late because it kept stopping every now and again for an hour to let the chicken/hamburger/bread and egg sellers on board! Still, I was just very happy to be back in Sucre and have a couple of weeks of Spanish lessons and to catch up with Vicky from Trailfinders (not her legal title).

So I headed to a hostel I had booked just for one night to settle back into Sucre, before doing some shopping around other hostels that afternoon. I found a really nice little place called ´Hostal Pachamama´ with a lovely older Bolivian couple running it. It had a nice garden area for catching some rays, and I had my own room with a desk looking out of the window over the terracotta rooftops to the mountains, plus my own bathroom! For a fiver a night, I booked two weeks straight away! That Thursday was the onset of Sucre Carnaval, in which you cannot go outside without getting bombarded by ´globos´ (water balloons) or covered in snow spray! But it is quite a sight to see many different brass bands parading the streets with dancers leading the way in all manner of bizarre costumes! They ranged from Spongebob Squarepants to the Scream mask. Nothing that looked in any way like traditional Bolivian dress! I spent the next day enquiring at different Spanish schools (while trying in vain to dodge the attacks from kids with Supersoakers!) and settled for Fox Language Academy. It seemed pretty good value, they run private lessons for the equivalent of about 4 quid an hour, and I was intent on learning some more than the backpacker´s phrases that amount largely to ´can I buy a ticket to...´ and ´do you have a cheaper room´.

Also staying at my hostel was a large French family, a couple with four children who are travelling South America by an old VW camper van (think ´Little Miss Sunshine´ and the yellow van in that!). It sounds like an amazing adventure to take your children on, but so much hard work! I cannot imagine cooking for six people every night who would not be happy with a packet of 20p Bolivian supernoodles; home (or van in this case!) educating the older boys who must have been about between eleven and thirteen, and the two younger kids looked about four and two years old. A big challenge, I reckon! The kids were lovely, apart from the four year old who thought it was great fun to run around with a water pistol while you were reading in the garden and soak you and your book/Spanish work. And scream all day long while running along the balcony by your window. And follow you around making loud fart noises with his mouth. One day I was having a shower and he clambered up the steps next to my bathroom (as my room was next to the staircase, there wasn´t just a viewing platform for my bathroom) and yelled ´HOLA!´ through the wooden slats. I nearly had a heart attack! I looked up to see his cheeky little face peering in at me, naked as the day I was born with one leg up on the wall trying to balance and shave my legs. I promptly curled over and turned my back to the window so he would only get a view of my glaringly white backside, hoping to dazzle him with snow-blindness. Alas, no, he kept yelling ´HOLA! BONJOUR!´ while I was dying of embarrassment. Eventually something sparkly must have distracted him so he left me to shower in peace, but I kept glancing up at the window expecting another French child to take a look at the hilarious sight of an English girl showering. And I can´t even get angry, you can´t be a pervert when you are four years old, can you?

So for the next two and a half weeks I spent my mornings learning Spanish with Abi, who was a fantastic teacher, the afternoons either checking out the museums, wandering the mercado, or heading up to Recoleta to get an amazing view over Sucre and do some studying at the café there, and my evenings catching up with Vicky. It was so nice to have some ´me´ time after being on the go for nearly three months solid and to catch up on sleep, blogs and have some Skype time with the family and boyfriend. Up at Recoleta is a wonderful café called ´Café Mirador´ that does great food, fresh fruit juices, the best coffee in Sucre, and amazing cakes! Not only that, there is something about the place that gives out the most calming and peaceful vibes. It is set outside, with big stone tables and deckchairs in a garden that looks out over Sucre to the mountains and valleys. There are big colourful bushes and flowers that are surrounded by butterflies and tiny hummingbirds, and they play a whole array of different types of music. But if ever any of you find yourself in Sucre, definitely go up to the Mirador Café. It is the perfect place to spend an afternoon catching up on a travel journal, doing Spanish homework, or just comtemplating life and all it´s mysteries! Moving on...

For those who worked with Vicky, she is doing very well in Sucre, has a nice little flat and is still doing her voluntary work until about June time, after which I believe she is heading to Argentina to meet Alan and travel up to Rio. It was lovely seeing her, we went for mojitos, had dinner in the mercado, shared travel anecdotes, she made me dinner one evening and showed me incredible photos from Colombia and Costa Rica, and then the Saturday just gone, before I got my bus back to La Paz, we went to Yotala for the afternoon. Yotala is quite a sleepy little village half an hour away by micro from Sucre, but has a nice little plaza to have lunch on, and then we walked (or were going to walk to) a place with a Quechua name that I cannot remember right now! Something like N´qchu. But it really is not that! Anyway, it is not even really important because we didn´t make it there. We were walking for a while along an old railway line when we heard a brass band and lots of noise that sounded like a fiesta, so we peered over the hill to find a big Bolivian party going on at a farm. We headed down to have a look, nearly got bowled over by a pig running at full pelt up the hill, but the people were waving at us, encouraging us to join in. It was a really lovely thing to happen, we chatted to the children while watching some of the adults dancing and they gave us a delicious spicy potato stew. We spent a little while there, and it would have been so nice to stay longer, but I had my bus to La Paz at 7pm that night so we had to go to get the micro back from Yotala.

So now I am back in La Paz for one night before flying to Lima tomorrow to head up the coast by bus through to Ecuador. Bolivia is a funny place, I will miss some things, and others not so much! I will miss the countryside, which is where some of the nicest people and beautiful scenery is, I will miss seeing Vicky, and the architecture of Sucre. I will miss the random names taxi drivers give their taxis - there was one in Sucre I kept seeing called ´Señor Mazda´ as he drove a Mazda, obviously. It would be a bit weird if he had a Volvo. The buses have names like ´Alan´, ´Kevin´ and ´Jheffry´, and the drivers who are bit more reckless give the buses names like ´El Lobo Solitario´ (the lone wolf) and ´El Tigre´ (the tiger), scrawled along the front window. I will not miss the electric showers. Sounds normal to us, right? In Bolivia, there are wires hanging out of the shower head, you have to be very careful not to touch the shower head as I did this morning and receive a slight electric shock! I will not miss the tummy bugs and constantly thinking ´shall I eat this?´ and, as you have guessed, I will not miss Bolivian bus journeys! Saying that, I had the perfect journey from Sucre back to La Paz! I had a big comfortable seat reminiscent of the Argentinian buses, all to myself, so no creepy men beside me, and it arrived earlier than expected! There were no bugs, it was neither too hot nor too cold, and a very comfortable ride that didn´t make me think I was on the road to hell!

I have spent my last day in La Paz doing lots of shopping at the Witches Market, I didn´t buy a dead llama foetus though, I do draw the line at souveniers with exceptionally bad vibes! And I had the most delicious sandwich of steak, cheese, egg and salad, which fingers crossed, El Estomago will not reject in an hours time!

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Comments

[Sarah]

Bolivia
I've really enjoyed hearing about your adventures in Bolivia as it's somewhere that's very recently been added to my list of places to go. The horror stories haven't put me off too much, but they do make me think for a moment how I'd handle those nightmare bus journeys! I've actually been inspired to write a blog entry of my own about the pre-travel fears and apprehensions about places we've never been before. Should be up in the next couple of days! www.footprintsofabackpacker.com/blog