Sucre

Sucre turned out to be an amazing city. Something you wouldn´t expect of Bolivia. Beautiful marble buildings, nice parks with palmtrees and flowers and a really nice chilled out vibe to the whole city. After we arrived I went to write my blog and check my emails. Afterwards we went for some dinner. After dinner we had a drink in Joy Ride, a bar formerly owned by dutch people. It was great to see they had Broodje Kroket and Bitterballen on the menu. We were all fairly tired so we went to bed quite early.

The next day we had a strawl around town. Because it turned out to be a national holiday, most of the shops were closed. Still the local market was open which was fun to walk around. Especially since the market turned out to be really really big. We drank some fuit juice at one of the marketstands. Afterwards we went for some lunch at the Joy Ride cafe to have a broodje kroket. Amazingly it tasted pretty good. I was really stunned to find this typical dutch food all the way in Bolivia. Later on we went up to a big hill to watch the sunset over town. Later on we went for some dinner at a sushi restaurant. Disappointingly the sushi wasn´t much and fairly expensive too.

The next day me and Ross, a scottish guy I have been traveling with for the last 3 weeks decided to go and check out the different tour companies in town, becuase I wanted to do something fun for my birthday. We walked around town and asked the different companies what they had on offer. We decided to go and do some rock climbing. Mainly because it was fairly cheap and it was something I had never done before. After booking the tour for my birthday we went onto the ¨Dino truck¨. A bus that departs from the main square to a dinosaur musuem a bit out of town. The musuem turned out to be pretty fun. It turned out in tthis part of Bolivia they have found the most dinosaur tracks in the world. The park had a load of life-size dinosaurs and from a distance we could see the wall with the 68 million year old dinosaur fossils. An english speaking guide explained a lot about how the fossils were preserved and from what kind of dinosaur they were from. Later that night we went for some dinner at a chinese restaurant which was better than expected. I went to bed fairly early as the next day was going to be my birthday.

The next morning we woke up quite early. After the congratulations from the boys I am traveling with we got ready for the rock climbing. We were picked up at 9:00. We drove with a taxi to a place a little bit out of town. There we walked up on a hill through the forrest. After a small climb we arrived at a rocky wall where we were going to climb. The guide walked up to attach the cord to a rock and then came down. Ross went first and climbed the wall pretty smoothly. Afterwards I went and to my surprise it wasn´t as difficult as I thought it would be. It was lots of fun. We climbed the wall doing diffrent routes about 4 or 5 times. Afterwards we walked to a viewingpoint which gave us a nice view over the city. We then walked back down to the road and grabbed a taxi back to our hostel. Once we got back it turned out to be 13:30. We went for some lunch at a cafe up on the hill of the city. We chilled out for the afternoon. Afterwards I went back in town to buy a birthday cake for my birthday. I reserrved a big table at the Joy Ride cafe as that´s where I wanted to celebrate my birthday at. I bought a massive cake at the local market. The woman even wrote my name and age on the cake with chocolate. I brought the cake to the cafe so they could store it for tonight. I went back to the hostel and had a shower. Most of us went to Joy Ride to first watch a movie we all wanted to see called ¨The devil´s miner¨. A documetary film about the mines in Potosi we had all just been to a few days before. After the movie we went to the table I had reserved where we all had dinner. I invited about 20 people, which was pretty funny considering I came out knowing nobody. After dinner the cake was brought and everyone sang happy birthday to me. The bar gave everyone in the group a shot on the house. Then everyone started to buy me drinks, which resulted in me drinking a lot of drinks. After dinner we all went upstairs where the bar transformed in  a local  discotec. It became a great night.

The next morning I woke up around 1PM. I had a shower and amazingly I didn´t have a massive hangover. Everything was closed around the city due to a strike. Thankfully our bus to La Paz was going that night, although the bus was more than an hours late. We caught the cold night bus and arrived in the early morning in La Paz.

I am going to spend a long weekend here, before I catch a flight to the jungle in the north of Bolivia. More news soon from La Paz!

May 26th 2008 – May 29th 200816