Sucre: Day 15 Had Parades, Fireworks, and Angry Clowns

---

Readers,

This post is coming (a bit) late but I thought I'd share some pictures and color commentary on our stay in Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia and our third last stop in the country. The whole downtown core is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its well maintained Spanish colonial architecture. Whereas La Paz only has one street that they have truly maintained in the colonial style, Sucre is pristinely maintained - every building has to be whitewashed each year and no neon signs are allowed anywhere! Mike and I spent a couple of days recharging after our mining experience in Potosi (entry to come) by hanging out at a lovely B&B and exploring the city.

Other travellers told us that Sucre always seems to have festivals going on and is very easy to live in and it turned out to be true. From what we could gather there was a big party going on to celebrate high school students getting into universities. At the heart of the celebrations was a huge parade where students from each university in Bolivia (we had no idea there were so many of them!) presented an entry in the parade, which usually involved dancing and costumes and sometimes a float. How they convinced hundreds of angst ridden teens to dress in Tarzan outfits and dance in the streets for hours at a time I do not know, but we were highly entertained by the prospect of being propositioned by such a requirement at that age. Also, the entries were often separated by a couple of teenagers coming out and lighting fireworks on the street while dogs attacked the sparking cardboard boxes (see pictures). Yet another entry to add to the list of 'Things you can't do back home'!

We capped the day by walking to a vista over the city and enjoying the sunset. It really was quite something, and Mike was particularly pleased to discover a small cafe that sold our favorite mass distributed beer - Huari - at the peak of the hill we climbed. We followed that with an excellent (and cheap!) Italian dinner before calling it a day.

Very much enjoyed our time Sucre and wished we could have stayed longer, but we had a plane to catch. Hope ya'll enjoy the pictures!



Jess

---

Photos

Pretty Sucre
All buildings have to be white washed each year and no neon signs are allowed! My kind of town!

Live Torches!
Add to the list of ´Things you can do in South America but not back home: Light live torches and leave them on the doorstep of the main government building´

Dancers in the Parade!
They were apprently celebrating getting into university so each school had a segment of dancers to represent!