My first week in Sucre, the ''not so white city''

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My first blog post will be more like a diary because I will be living in Sucre for 4 weeks and live like a local. This also means that I won’t have 1000 of pictures as my goal is to not look like a tourist (which is hard). After those 4 weeks, when I will be travelling around Bolivia and Peru, I will write blog posts about places I visit (not on a daily basis) and I will have much more pictures …



J-1: January 26, 2015

At 11 am, I got to Sucre from Santa Cruz where my host family was waiting for me at the airport with my name written in big letters on a piece of paper (you know, a touristic thing that we see in movies). It was a short 35 minutes flight, which would have been a 12 hours bus ride (you can imagine how the road are between those two cities). When I got to their home, which is where I will be living for the next 4 weeks, it was time already time for the ‘’almuerzo’’ (lunch), which is their main meal (A LOT OF FOOD) of the day. Actually, I only ate once today as I couldn’t eat anything in the afternoon. After the lunch, I went for a walk in the city (and also to get Internet as they don’t have Wifi at home and my parents back in Canada had no news for the past 30 hours). Walking in the city, I quickly understood that the so called ‘’white city’’ is not really white. I asked some locals why we call it ‘’white city’’ and they told me that the city used to be white, but that people started to paint their homes. However, there is a law that obliges people living in the city ‘’center center’’ (only a small part) to keep their house white and, each year, if there are graffiti, to paint their house. (These corrections should be done on Wikipedia and other websites that say the city is white!!!). When I got to Sucre in the morning, I didn’t feel the change in altitude (as Sucre as at 2 810m above sea level). However, walking back the small hill to get home in the afternoon, I felt my heart beating so hard and I had a bit of a hard time, having my first ‘’altitude sickness’’. FUNNY STORY: In the middle of the night, I woke up (I guess I had a nightmare) and ran out of my bedroom and, in panic, started to talk in Croatian to my host brother. The poor guys, which had no clue what I was saying, asked me: Quieres agua? (Do you want water?) When I realized that I was looking like a fool, I said: Si si, quiero agua! (Yes, I want water!) This was a very bad first impression :P



J-2: January 27, 2015

In the morning, I had my first Spanish lesson (8:30 to 12:30). During my first week of classes, I will be doing revision, which is a good thing as I realized I forgot a lot! When I got home for the lunch, there were 5 more people than the day before, and this number is increasing every day (as I said, it’s a family of 7 brothers and sisters and they are almost all married and have kids, so every day I have a surprise when I get around the table). By the way, only three of them live in the same house as me, but they all come over to have lunch. It is hard to remember all the names: Jose (Pepe), Juan Pablo, Luis, Ramiro, Jimena, Gabriela, Luly (Lourdes), Miriam, Isabela, Jorge, Segundida, Fernandito, Albertito, Dianita, Anita, Jaime … and much more! FUNNY STORY: When I got home at night, my host mother offered me a cinnamon from the brand ‘’Cinnabon’’. I have to say I was not expecting to have a Cinnabon in Bolivia. When I told her that I eat that home and I love it, she said: Oh cool, this brand is from Santa Cruz, Bolivia and you have it in Canada. I responded right away: Euhhhh non, this is totally an American brand. She said: Ohh, I didn’t know. Cinnabon a Bolivian store, lolllll!



J-3: January 28, 2015

During my morning Spanish class, I got to meet 3 other students: Ebba (Sweden), Charles (USA) and Soo-Jin (South Korea). It was actually funny how we met as I didn’t even present myself to them. We actually just started to talk about the Oruro Carnival (the biggest in Bolivia and the second biggest in South America after the Carnival the Rio) and said how we all want to go there and that we should go there together. (Yup, this is a backpacking thing: You plan stuff with people before even knowing their name or who they are!) In the afternoon, the four of us went to Condor Café (the main Café where we go pretty much every day as it’s cheap and good) to plan our trip. However, it was a ‘’big time fail regarding planning’’ as we just ended up chatting and getting to know each other. At night, we were supposed to go play Wally (or something like that, which is a sport similar to volley) but we were kind a late and ‘’missed the boat’’. A thing that I really like about this city is that it is hot during the day and cool at night, which makes it nice to sleep. Also, it’s supposed to be a rainy season, but I haven’t seen rain so far! I guess I brought the sun with me J



J-4: January 29, 2015

Today, we tried to book our accommodation for the Oruro Carnival, which was hard as it is a small city and everyone goes there during the Carnival. We booked something, but we were not sure if everything is ok with our reservation and the hostel doesn’t have a functional phone number, nor a functional email address. At night, we went to eat in the Central market (3$ for a huge plate of food, loving it!). As I didn’t really know what to eat, I turned to the guy besides me and told him: Let me know what you are going to eat and I will eat the same thing as you! (I thought locals will know what is good on the Menu! And yes, it was delicious!) After that, we walked a bit in the city and bought some 0.20$ cake – yep, Ill get fat here for sure! We then went for a beer to a bar called ‘’Joy Ride’’, which is pretty much a ‘’Gringo Bar’’. I got home pretty late and one of my host hermanas (sisters) was still awake. We had a chat about how the Oruro Carnival is amazing, and she was giving me some tips, like that we need to buy tickets, which we didn’t know ….: An interesting thing here is that people always take the Micro (small bus), even though it takes longer to get somewhere with the bus than to walk because of the traffic. For example, I like to walk to school as it’s only a 15-minutes walk. However, the locals (aka my family) always take the bus which takes over 20 minutes because of the traffic! FUNNY STORY: One of my friends was paying the guy at the Internet Café and she didn’t really understand was he was saying so she said to us: Ok, I will give him 2 Bolivianos and I see what he gives me back so I know how much it costs. Priceless!!!



J-5: January 30, 2015

I saw rain only during my fifth day here, even though it is rainy season and it is supposed to rain at least a bit almost every day. For breakfast, I ate an avocado mix. During my Spanish lesson, out of the blue, an Australian girl I met earlier this week offered me a job in a hostel. She said that the owners are looking for someone to work there in exchange of free accommodation. Although that would be cool and I would save some money, I thought that the experience with my host family is amazing and I want to stay with them! At night, we had cooking class at school. The teachers were showing us how to cook Pisura (or something like that) which is a traditional plate made of Quinoa. They told us that quinoa used to be popular here, but when Bolivia started to export almost all of its production, it became pretty expensive for locals to buy some. At night, we went to a ‘’restaurant-bar-dance club’’ called Florin. It’s a pretty cool place with 50/50 locals/tourists and the music is 50/50 Spanish/English. Another cool thing in Bolivia is that many bars have ‘’happy hours’’ (2 for 1) from 9:30 to 10:30, which is a perfect time as there is no need to pre-drink home! Moreover, this means that we will be drinking pretty much every single night!



J-6: January 31, 2015

It was the birthday of one of my host brothers. They do big celebrations as pretty much the whole family was there (over 20) and we have breakfast and lunch. After the breakfast, I went to a place called Recoleta. It is a 5-minutes walk from where I live and it has one of the best views of the city. There is also a café on the top, which I elected to be my place to do homeworks as the view is beautiful! In the afternoon, we went to the Black Market, one of the main 3 markets in this city. It is pretty cool and, again, very cheap. At night, we went out to Florin and after to Stigma (one of the biggest clubs here). We got home at 4am and had to wake up at 7am the next morning to go to Tarabuco Market, the biggest market in Bolivia that only open on Sunday.



J-7: February 1, 2015

After 3 hours of sleep, I had to wake up to catch the bus for Tarabuco. We didn’t take the ‘’traditional/normal’’ bus that all tourist take, but rather a local bus. We did that for the experience and to save …. 2$. The place is pretty nice, but it’s a catch for tourists as people there just try to sell you all kind of things! At night, I went to ‘’Joy Ride’’ to watch the Super Bowl. It was actually pretty cool as it was full of people from all over the world cheering for Seattle (only one German guy that was for the Patriots ….) FUNNY STORY: Saturday morning, we got a confirmation that everything is ok with our reservation for the hostel in Oruro. Moreover, to secure our reservation, the hostel asked us to pay the whole amount before Sunday night. However, when we tried to pay, we realized that it can only be done via Western Union or a Bank Deposit, and both are closed on Saturday and Sunday.



That’s it for week one of my 6-months trip …

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