Due to Carnival activities in Sucre; Teresa and I spent a lot of time locked behind the gates of the hostel in our room. I’m thankful that our accomodation at Hostel Sucre was so comfortable….not knowing beforehand the amount of time we would spend in it. If your wondering why we spent so much time behind locked gates/doors….check out my previous posting on Bolivian Water Balloon Dispensers.
We did manage to trapse around town a little during the late morning and early afternoon hours. We were not able to take any of the tours that we had hoped or visit any of the Museums. Everything was closed down tight due to Carnival. Had we known this in advance we would have altered our travel plans and skipped Sucre.
The Market in Sucre is very colorful. The fruits and vegetable’s are enticing. We did indulge in some fresh fruit and so far we are faring well. No travel sickness….yet. I hope that I didn’t just jinx us by posting that!!
Sucre is called the ‘White City’ due to all of the stark white Colonial Style buildings. It is really a beautiful city by Bolivian standards. The Spanish influence is unmistakeable. Sucre was taken over in 1538 by the Spainards due to it’s valuable mining. There are stict controlls on building and maintenance in Sucre in an attempt to maintain the white-washed look.
The bell tower in the photo above was just down the road from our hostel. Sucre was named a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1991. Below is another fine example of Spanish archetecture. If you look closely you will see the Water Balloon Dispensers on the corner. Another fine example of why we choose to stay in the hostel.
Teresa enjoyed some haggling with a local vendor as I looked on from one of the wonderful park benches scattered about. It was a beautiful day and I even managed to get a bit of a ‘farmers tan’.
Teresa and I decided on our second night of being held captive in the hotel, unable to see or do anything…that it was time to move on. We had spent most of the second day attempting to book a one-day trek with Condor Trekkers to Parque Cretacico and Seven Waterfalls. Parque Creatacico is an archaeological site reportedly to have unearthed something like 5,000 dinosaur tracks, eight species in total. It’s the largest such site in the world. Unfortunately, due to Carnival everything was closed on our first day and on the second we were NOT going to leave the room after 4pm to make the deposit to secure our position in the following days trek. At this point, we had both decided that we had had enough of being cold and wet from foam, water balloons and rain.
We are off in the morning to Potosi where we hope to have better luck in booking a trip to the Salar de Uyuni (Salt Flats). From the stories that we have both read we are likely to have some great stories on our return.
Related articles
- Arrival in LaPaz, Bolivia (arediscoveredlife.wordpress.com)
- Carnival in Oruro (arediscoveredlife.wordpress.com)