Sucre - Bolivia's Most Beautiful City

Looking at a relief map of Bolivia, Santa Cruz and Sucre seem to be pretty close - particularly in South American terms. As the crow flies they are about 300km apart, about the same distance as between La Paz and Oruro, a journey we knew from experience takes just 3-and-a-half hours. We were a little surprised therefore to find that the bus for Sucre was scheduled to leave Santa Cruz at 4.30pm arriving in Sucre at 7.30am the next morning.

A glance at the road map gave us some clues. The route between the two is nowhere near direct - it winds all over the place. We also learnt that Sucre was 2500m higher than Santa Cruz, so presumably these were mountain roads. And so it proved.

The journey began inauspiciously with a 30 minute delay as passenger luggage was loaded onto the bus. To be fair there was way more of this than normal, and a good deal of it had to be lashed to the roof of the bus (fortunately not our rucksacks). So, 30 minutes late, the driver started the engine. He then quickly turned it off, shouted something, and everyone started to get off the bus. Apparently this one didn't work and we had to get a new one.

An hour of waiting for a bus and transferring luggage (which I ended up having to help with!) later and we were on our way.

The roads were indeed mountainous, windy and in poor condition. We got 2 flat tyres on the way and ended up in Sucre 3 hours late. Still - hearing the problems other travellers have had on Bolivian busses I think we can count ourselves lucky - this time at least ...

We arrived in Sucre for another 30 hour blitz of trying to pack in as much sight seeing as possible. Unfortunately we'd arrived on a Sunday, and it became increasingly apparent that everything was closed on a Sunday. Sucre is another one of them colonial towns, so during our whistle-stop tour we managed to see the outside of a beautiful cathedral, the outside of a whole load of colonial churches, the outside of a couple of museums and the outside of a few nice looking restaurants.

We then retired to the market to sample the great fruit, supurb juice stands, and traditional market food stalls. At the stalls we ate a dish called milaneza de pollo - a thin slice of chicken covered in egg yolk then fried - delicious. This delicacy plus some rice, a few potatoes, some lettuce, some tomato, and a bowl of soup costs around 50p. Once again - I love Bolivia!

The next day we visited all the sites that were closed on a Sunday ... only to find they were all closed on a Monday as well. Back to the market! We did eventually however manage to find one very nice church called Iglesia De La Merced that mercifully was open. The entrance fee included a trip to the bell tower which afforded great views over the city.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon in the sunny plaza, taking in the wonderful architecture and the lovely weather ... knowing that soon we'd be going to the highest city in the world, which by all accounts wasn't the warmest of places ...