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Published: July 13th 2016
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Although not the largest city in Bolivia, Sucre is one of the most important cities. It is traditionally their capital and was where the declaration of independence was signed. Today it is also a UNESCO world heritage site. We had booked into a lovely traditional hotel, as Sarah was still feeling ill from altitiude sickness. We decided because of this to head to the local hospital to check she was alright. This was quite a surreal experience when they hooked her up to oxygen and started giving her injections, of god knows what. I had to get supplies from the pharmacy, but the great thing was it cleared Sarah up. The whole experience costed the equivalent of £5 (£3.50 pharmacy fees and £1.50 for being in hospital). The second day was better and I headed to the Casa de la Libertad- the place where the independence declaration had been signed. My Spanish wasn’t that great so there was quite a bit I didn’t pick up, however what I gathered was that as well as Spanish influence, there were challenges for Bolivia from Peru and Argentina, but Bolivia had been supported and named after a Venezuelan
President by the name of Simon Boliviar. Today Venezuela is in a lot of financial difficulties, which is concerning Bolivia as Venezuela gave them a lot of money in the early days and may ask for it back. We found a great veggie café in Sucre called Condor, which also housed Conder Trekkers. This is a not for profit organisation that supports local community projects outside of Sucre. I went on one of their walking tours of the city, where we discovered all about a rich miner (who became rich after independence from the Spanish), he married a rich Spanish woman and they travelled to France together. So enamoured by the place they decided to build a mini Eiffel Tower- which acted as a weather station for a while and two Arc de Triumphs- who knew they could be plural. We also checked out a local traditional bar, tried their traditional drink of chichi. This is a sweet drink made from purple corn that has been boiled with pineapple, cinnamon, cloves and sugar. True to European culture, we decide to impose our religious beliefs on other cultures, Bolivia
was no exception with Spanish Catholics explaining about their God and how people would go to hell if they were bad where the devil would torture them forever. Based on this the Bolivians designed head dresses and held special events throughout the year where these costumes would be used. Oddly a Bolivian tradition is for a period of 24hrs the strongest man in the village would rule during that time. They had to wear a devil head dress and be allowed to choose any woman he wanted in that time, so the dress was a way to disguise him whilst he was basically going crazy for 24hrs. Later we attempted to try some salsa. But the place that did salsa was pretty quiet, so in the end we opted to go out instead as we had met some others from our salt flats tour. Late night taxis in Bolivia is definitely an experience. One driver we had was smoking weed whilst driving and the other had a backwards car- no joke, the steering wheel and pedals were on one side with the entire dashboard of the car being on the passenger side!! How this
car was roadworthy and how it was built was something else! The next day was spent trying to find a missing museum- the museum of natural history, which didn’t exist, but everyone was trying to find it for us. I don’t think the local University had told anyone that they had shut it down. We ended up in a random museum, of the house of Dr Alfredo Gutierrez a prominent journalist and politician, apparently. We then found a restaurant that did a 4 course meal for £8 before checking out the views of Sucre from the top of the hill…… and then trying to find that missing museum again before giving up. Our last day in Sucre was first spent visiting a archaeology dig site where they had recently found dinosaur footprints. The area was a quarry, and still was! But whilst they were scouring the land they came across some impressively preserved footprints which dated back to the Jurassic era. The actual site where the footprints are is still in the middle of a working quarry so you pretty much had to dodge lorries and trucks to
get to them. Sadly with the sheer scale of dust and dirt still from the quarry, I am worried how long these footprints will remain, especially now that they are exposed. We met up with a few people on the dinosaur tour and decided to head to the castle of the only prince and princess of Sucre- Francisco Argandona- the wealthy miner and his wife, born from a rich Spanish family-Dona Clotilde, to see their pink castle called El Castillo de La Glorieta. The castle had been left empty as soon Francisco and Dona died in 1910 and 1933. Between 1960- 1980 different people owned it in order to try to bring it back to its former glory- the military and eventually the government. The couple couldn’t have children so they set up an orphanage in the grounds, this ceased shortly after their deaths. Nowadays the castle is still quite dilapidated and with Dona’s Spanish family selling every ornament and item in the house for $10 000 each, it is no wonder. The house had 3 towers and a church inside as well as quarters for the Italian/ British architect who resided there during
the building process. Later we had food with the group we had met during that day, then it was off to La Paz.
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