Jurassic Sucre
Trip Start
Apr 18, 2011
1
42
51
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Wasi Masi
La Dolce Vita
Hostal Amigo
Sucre, Bolivia
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Eilidh and I had heard good things about La Dolce Vita, a guesthouse on the other side of town. We walked the 10 minute walk from Hostal Amigo in the baking heat, arriving to find a no vacancies sign on the door. We rung the bell, more in hope than expectation, and had a quick discussion with the guy who worked there. He told us that they were full for the night but that we could book for the next day, we just decided to go for it and booked in for 5 nights. The hostel guy also advised us of a nice place where we could stay for the night, so we got our bags back on and made the short walk up to Wasi Masi guesthouse. This was much, much better than Hostal Amigo, we had a nice en-suite room in a Japanese style complete with futon and sliding door on the bathroom. We dumped our bags and went out to properly explore the lovely wee town of Sucre.
The main plaza has a number of important buildings surrounding it. Firstly it has the House of Freedom, where Simon Bolivar wrote the Bolivian constitution and declaration of Independence. It is a lovely building with an amazing stained glass window in the colours of the Bolivian flag. Next to that is the cathedral and on another corner is a fantastic wee chocolate shop that we frequented. The plaza itself has nice avenues running through it with shaded cover being offered by lots of trees. We spent the rest of the day exploring the various shops that were dotted around and getting some food.
The following morning we were hefting our packs back on our back and finally moving down to La Dolce Vita. We got settled and then headed out to the market for some fresh juice. The market in Sucre was excellent, endless stalls of fruit and veg, topped off by some of the tastiest fresh juice we have had in South America. Our personal favourite was pineapple, orange and passion fruit.
Really, we didn't do enough in Sucre to merit a blow by blow account, so I'm just going to cut to the chase and give you the highlights.
One night we walked up to the top of the town to watch sunset in a nice bar overlooking the city. It took us around 30 minutes to walk up to the view point but it was definitely worth it. We had to avoid some road works on our walk as well(never ending problems with roads here in Bolivia). Sucre, like Popayan, is largely made up of white buildings, so when the sun is setting it looks spectacular. We enjoyed a beer, watched the sunset and had an underwhelming pasta dish each.
One of the main things we wished to do while we were in Sucre was to see the Dinosaur footprints just outside the city. Sucre is famous for this discovery, and it boasts the most dinosaur footprints in one place in the world. We got up, caught the Dino Bus with an Irish couple we had met at the hostel the night before, and off we went.The 'Dino bus' was a small lorry with a dinosaur head sticking out the cab and some benches in it.
The footprints were about 15 minutes outside of the city in a small park devoted to them. The park has lots of life-sized dinosaur replicas dotted around, from the T-Rex' to the Brontosaurus. There was even a Nessie like dinosaur chilling out in a pool. The footprints themselves are on a vertical cliff face that used to be the ground, before disappearing under water for a while and ending up in the middle of a mountain when the Andes were formed. A local limestone business was cutting into the mountain when they found the footprints. There are 4 families of dinosaur represented, including the T-Rex's slightly smaller brother and the Brontosaurus. We got an English speaking guide who took us around and explained a few things, as well as showing us the casts they made of the footprints so we could see them up close. We couldn't go up close and look at the proper footprints as the wall is not in the best condition. They actually had a large triangular section fall off over the last couple of years that destroyed a number of prints, but luckily also revealed some new ones underneath. Our guide showed us pictures of people in the past abseiling down the wall, not the best way to try and preserve a 400 million year old site!
We rented some binoculars to see them up close. Hundreds of footprints from several types of Dinosaur were scattered across the wall, and it was cool to imagine the beasts walking in our world millions of years ago.
The only other real thing of note we did was spend Thanksgiving with the American, Swedish and Dutch folk that we met in Potosi. We had a veggie chilli and a few bottles of Bolivian wine (not as bad as we feared), not quite the feast most Americans get but was a nice evening with some cool people. It was also my first celebrated Thanksgiving, poor showing for one who is half American! Kaitlin (USA) insisted we make 'hand turkeys' which involved us drawing round our hands and making it into a thanksgiving turkey . After a lot of drinks we all made a valiant effort, with fairly hilarious results.
The rest of our time in Sucre was largely spent eating and playing with the hostels cat who seemed to enjoy coming through our window and sleeping on one of us. It was a pretty large cat and strangely it liked hugs. A paw over each shoulder and legs on the bed! We called it Gato (Spanish for cat) and enjoyed it when it thought to visit us.
All in all a nice relaxing 5 days in Sucre, eating more chocolate than usual and enjoying the city and the sun. Next week will be more exciting when we go in a 4x4 to Chile for 3 days across the Salar de Uyuni (salt desert).
