Sucre was one of my favourite towns on the trip so far.

We arrived by plane on Sunday morning. Our plane had been delayed by an hour due to bad weather in Sucre early in the morning. The landing was quite amusing, we didn't descend very far into the airport as Sucre is 2.8km up in the mountains. The air was fresh and the sun was shining when we stepped off the plane into the tiny airport. We made out way to the hotel which was made a little tricky because there was some kind of speed car rally taking place in the centre of the town!

The hotel is probably my favourite yet. It was located centrally and had a lovely room overlooking a courtyard all painted white with pot plants. I will add some photos (already on Facebook).

We had lunch at a small restaurant just off the main square and Esben had the most delicious beef medallions for about £5 which led to many more meals of beef medallions during our stay :-)! After lunch we walked up a hill to a cafe with a terrace overlooking the town. Because of the thinner air we both found this walk a bit of a challenge but managed to huff and puff our way up there! We spent the afternoon in the sun drinking coffee and juices and enjoying the view then headed back to the hotel to sit on the roof, read our books and watch the sunset.

Once the sunsets on Sucre it gets a bit chilly, nothing like the -11 degrees predicted in Tupiza when we are planning to be there but you still need a warm jumper. That evening we took a walk around various tripadvisor restaurants in the town before settling on a snack in a small restaurant just down the road.

On Monday we decided to get a taxi out of town to a place where you could walk to some waterfalls. The taxi ride was a challenge as the first driver, lovely as he was, was from 80km put of Sucre and it turned out he didn't know where we meant .... he then wanted £10 to try and find it. The guide book had said it shouldn't cost you more than £2 to get there so we said our goodbyes and found a taxi driver who did know the way. He dropped us at the beginning of the track and we started walking. The track was super dusty and there were a few trucks driving back and forth so quite a lot of dust inhalation went on and Esben's contact lenses were held in by dust sludge ;-)!

It turned out to be quite tricky to find the waterfalls but we got there with a bit of off-roading and rock scrambling. There wasn't much water flowing as it was the dry season and worst of all there was loads of rubbish around the pools of the waterfalls. There were a couple of groups of teenagers swimming in their clothes but no one else there. We climbed to some of the higher falls which were cleaner but the temperature was about 0 degrees so we decided against swimming. However Esben did attempt a hilarious climb up the side of a waterfall to see what was there and then when it came to the climb down he was so scared of falling into the water he stripped to his underwear and made his way carefully down looking a bit like a naked starfish slapped on the side of a cliff. I watched with amusement.

After some sandwiches perched on a rock we started the walk back to where the taxi dropped us off and managed to catch a bus back to the town centre.

In the evening, after another sunset book session on the roof, we went to 'joy ride' for dinner. Awful name but great beef medallions! Esben had a ridiculously big beer and I stuck to my pure vodka Caiphanas :-)!

One thing you can't avoid in South America is the football being on in every single restaurant. It's impossible to avoid it! After England's recent epic fail I have no interest anymore...not that I really did before.

On our last full day in Sucre we spent the morning trawling the shops for Alpaca jumpers for Esben. Unfortunately there weren't that many in his size and the ones that were weren't the best colours. At lunch time, after I had bought at Alpaca poncho, we called it a day on the shopping front. We had a quick lunch of crepe and an iced tea and then grabbed our walking boots and took a 2 hour hike up to a statue of Jesus on one of the hills that surrounds Sucre. We were getting more and more used to the thin air so it was enjoyable and had some great views on the way up. When we were up there some of the Bolivians were lighting fires of rubbish and seemed to be doing some kind of mini ceremonies.

On the way down we stopped at the cafe with the views and had a juice and read our books in the sun. In the evening we went back to 'joy ride' for another round of beef medallions and some Bolivian red wine, produced in the highest vineyard in the world (dad I have a picture of the label for you).

The next morning we had arranged a private taxi to take up up to Potosi where the altitude was about to get a bit more serious!

Alice
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