Blogs from Chuquisaca Department, Bolivia, South America - page 22

Thursday 3 April A beautiful night's sleep, a late breakfast and disappeared off into the markets with Kel, Anna, Linda and Shilpa. Amazing piles of fruit and veg everywhere, try some pea pods and dried chick-peas, bargain over some toiletries and try some chocolate fountain. By 2pm I'm ready for the city tour, along with Laura and Larissa. We drive, ooo, half a block, and pull up on the main Plaza. Some interesting information on the buildings and statues here (including Sucre, who along with Boliviar, liberated many S. American countries from Spain). Next stop the weaving museum, which fills us in on a lot of information on local groups... All different styles, all passed down through generations. Interesting, bit whistle-stop, before we head to a city lookout (romance hill!), and then 5km outside the city ... read more

Bolivia is a country that is continually exceeding my expectations. After experiencing Bolivia´s stunning natrual scenery in Tupiza and Uyuni we moved on to explore some of the more cultural aspects of Bolivia by visiting two of its important colonial cities, Potosi and Sucre. Visiting these places took us a little further from the "gringo trail" we had encountered in Uyuni and gave more chance to engage with the locals (see my social comment at the end!). Potosi During the 16th century, Potosi was the biggest city in the Americas, and far bigger than London or Paris. This was mostly due to the large Cerro Rico towering over the city which is a rich source of minerals, in particular silver. The Spanish realised the potential for mining and Potosi grew as a result. I was worried ... read more

I´ve been in Sucre for a week now. Spent the first few days exploring the city and attended one to one Spanish class from Wednesday through Friday. Amazing how exhausting 4 hours of school can be! Tomorrow I´ll start group classes which I plan to do for two weeks. I´ve been getting sick here twice already so I decided to stay away from the market food for a while. Which is a pitty, I´ll miss my morning routine of eating a fresh fruit salad at the local market and reading (well trying to anyway) the newspaper. Also, and I´m quite excited about that, I found a new weekend volunteer job. I joined a group of volunteers today and we took 12 children with varying degrees of disabilities to the park for the afternoon. It was great ... read more

Sucre is a town as sweet as the name implies..... although the name has nothing do do with sugar in Spanish and everything to do with Mariscal Antonio Jose de Sucre, who was one of several men who fought for independence from the Spanish. We stayed in Sucre for about a week, in the hope of acclimatising to altitude before heading upwards to Potosí. There isn't a huge amount to do in Sucre apart from enjoy the historical centre and eat great cheap food at the many foreign-run restaurants around the plaza. Sucre is about 2600m above sea level, high enough so that upon arrival you can feel a little puffed walking up the stairs or a small hill. We filled the first few days of our stay in Sucre with things like eating, checking out ... read more

We are a bit behind with our blog but we now try to catch up a bit. With easter we went for a short holiday to Sucre. We actually wanted to go by car but somebody was so nice to break in to it and take out our dashboard and part of the engine. Poor poor car. Luckily we had decided to take an allrisk insurance because it was only 150 USD for one year. So it was a bad one for the insurance. Unfortunatly the car was not ready for easter,so we decided to fly to Sucre instead of driving. Sucre is the capital of Bolivia and known as the white city. We had a fantastic Hotel (www.parador.com.bo), we looked a bit around and had a very nice relaxing weekend. In Sucre they also have ... read more