Sucre, Bolivia

Sucre

First of all, we would like to apologize for not hearing from us for so long. We will explain the reason in this blog.

After visiting the dusty and gloomy mines of Potosi, we took the bus to the capital of Bolivia, Sucre. It was a four-hour, very curvy ride and Muriel wasn't feeling well when we arrived. We didn't waste much time and wanted to take a taxi. Everyone always says that it's important to take an "official" taxi and not the "illegal" ones. Well, it's difficult in Bolivia, why? All taxis are registered and have 1000 stickers all over them, there is a taxi sticker on the windshield that you can find at every kiosk. But those are the official ones, we asked a police officer. He said, "Just get in, it's safe here in Sucre!"

When we arrived at the hostel, we were a bit confused. It was a HUGE hostel. We checked in and the guy at the reception led us through the labyrinth of the hostel. Up four flights of stairs, through 37 corridors, and finally we reached our room. Luckily, the hostel also had a restaurant. We settled down and went to the restaurant. We had a delicious meal including a drink for a total of 15 francs, which is quite cheap for Bolivia, but it was very tasty.

This is 'Pique Macho'. Super delicious, meat, green pepper, egg, potatoes, and with bread sauce! Traditional Bolivian dish.

On the second day, we went on a walking tour. During this tour, we visited beautiful viewpoints, heard ghost stories, and met nice people. Along the way, we received an "invitation" to go hiking. It was free, so we decided to go, oh boy, if only we knew what was waiting for us.

Two days later, the day had come, it started at 7 in the morning. Around 8 suspicious looking travelers were waiting for the announced bus. We all discussed what kind of tour it could be, no one knew. The bus arrived and we were definitely the youngest. It took about 1 hour until we arrived somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We all got off and had to wait for about 1 hour, no idea what was going on. Suddenly, someone started "preaching". It sounded like someone in a political campaign. Additionally, the Bolivian TV station with 3 cameras stood there, they filmed everything. We looked at each other and thought "What's going on here"! But he told an interesting story. A few hundred years ago, the Spanish came to Bolivia to conquer the land. The locals didn't know how to use guns and were defenseless against the Spaniards. They hid in caves and threw stones at the Spanish. They made life-sized dolls and placed them in front of the cave entrances. After the Spaniards shot all their ammunition at the dolls, the locals finally had a chance and ultimately won. Afterwards, they "devoured" the hearts of the Spaniards. Yes, we were probably a bit baffled, we were there too.

When some of them started crying with joy, we knew something special was going on. I asked them what was happening and they had no idea either. We waited about 500 meters ahead for the group. Suddenly, we heard music and the whole group came around the corner. There were about 50 people, including press and their own "band" (that's what it sounded like). I couldn't understand a thing, Muriel was laughing at the front. She knew what I was thinking. I asked her what was happening, and she didn't know either. We walked for about 1 hour on a narrow path with the music playing every 10 seconds. But we had to keep going, it was really a beautiful new path.

We arrived at a little village and suddenly there were hundreds of people who had planted little trees along the roadside. They greeted us with smiling faces and probably wondered what the foreigners were doing. After another 30 minutes, we reached another "village". On top of a hill, there was a brand new church. It was very crowded up there, with traditional Bolivian music playing, which we had been hearing for about 10 minutes. We had lunch in a small house with the locals. It was really delicious, for 50 cents, rice with some kind of meat, potatoes, and a curry sauce.

It was really delicious

When we followed a puppy behind a house:

 we also saw how the women cooked the food, well, we didn't necessarily have to see that....

After eating, we went to the church. Some people were sitting in front of the church. There were plenty of seats for them. They started interviewing the people - at a volume that could probably be heard in Switzerland.

Then the Bolivian anthem played and everyone stood up. After the anthem, we finally found out why all this was happening. They had built a new path that leads from nowhere to the village of Tarabuco. They had apparently been working on it for 3 years and everyone had been waiting for this one day (they told us with tears in their eyes), and we happened to be in the middle of it without knowing what was happening, really funny.

Yes, after the whole ceremony, we wanted to go to Tarabuco, there is a huge street market, as we found out. We waited by the road until a bigger car passed by. It was already full, but no one cared. We squeezed ourselves in and it was incredibly cramped.

When we arrived in the village, we wandered through the market. They had everything, from toilet bowls to cell phones and homemade products.

Then Muriel bought a baby alpaca sweater, super fluffy. As we walked through the streets, a Bolivian man looked at us and said, "Are you crazy, are you crazy or what?!" We burst out laughing, it was a real Bolivian Indian who had lived in Germany for a while many years ago.

Well, when I look at him, I feel like he's the crazy one....

After 1-2 hours, we made our way back to Sucre by bus. We squeezed ourselves into the same crowded bus. More and more people got on, and I kept saying, "Okay, NOW there really is no more space, impossible!" Well, it was possible.

Our plan was to travel to Santa Cruz and Cochabamba after 5 days at the latest. However, we liked it so much that we kept extending our stay for another day. In the end, we spent 6 days in Sucre, just relaxing and wondering what to do next. We decided to go to a Spanish school. The next day was already the first day of school.

We were very excited and curious about what awaited us. We could have individual or group lessons. Luckily, there were enough people for a group. We were assigned our teacher, Said, and went to our classroom. We started speaking a bit of Spanish so that he knew our level. He lives in Santa Cruz and told us about the city. It's very hot there, about 40 degrees, and the most dangerous city in Bolivia. We crossed that destination off our list and had more time for school, which wasn't bad either. In total, we had 8 days of school and learned a lot. We also got to know a great group of people. Martin & Emma from Sweden, Alba from Spain, and Sehuan from South Korea. During this time, we did activities together outside of school. It just clicked. One evening, we sneaked onto the roof of the church in Sucre and enjoyed the sunset from there.

We had a lot of meals at the hostel because the food was amazing and good value for money. Every Thursday, they performed traditional dances from all over South America, and on Fridays, they showcased traditional Bolivian dances on the stage of the hostel and restaurant.

They also organized big parties on Saturday evening, and 200 people attended. Yes, one evening we got a bit carried away with the Happy Hour and the mojitos. They also offered free salsa lessons, but I didn't participate for long. Muriel did really well though. Despite having an extremely self-centered dance teacher. It was like "Come on, show me what you've got, either you can do it or not, I can definitely do it".

After 15 days, the second to last day arrived, and it was also our last day of school. During the lunch break, they performed a Christmas show for us.

They danced for us, and at the end, they took four people from the audience to participate. Guess who was among them... yeah... In the afternoon, we said goodbye to our teacher, Said. He had really grown on us, and it was not easy to say goodbye.

We left school with our notebooks full of notes and ready to put our Spanish into practice and learn more. Now we are sitting in the lobby of the hostel waiting for the bus, but not alone ;-)

See you soon, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year

Ernesto and Muriel