Sucre

After 2 bad night’s sleep on buses we checked in to the first half decent hotel for 2 nights and decided to rest. We instantly felt out of place in Bolivia, the locals seemed very rude and spoke no English and we spoke very little Spanish, so we thought we were going to hate it. After spending some time in the centre of Sucre, we realised not all Bolivians were rude and began to settle in. We booked a week’s intensive course of Spanish lessons and moved to a nicer hotel in the centre of Sucre. We began our Spanish and remembered how hard it was to learn something new.

On our first weekend in Sucre we visited Parque Cretico, an incredible place about dinosaurs were they use to roam the earth. There they have a wall that used to be the ground but tectonic plate movement has now made vertical and is covered in dinosaur footprints. They also have life size models of dinosaurs as well as dinosaur skeletons (and they are huge!). We spent five weeks here working in the orphanage and alongside this visited several markets, cathedrals and churches as well as sampling many restaurants and finding some amazing places.

Orphanage

For five weeks we worked at Hogar Tata San Juan De Dios orphanage, a place that cares for around 45 children aged 0-5. We spent our time here with the 0-2 year olds and quickly became very attached to them. On our first day we were thrown in at the deep end with feeding and changing nappies (and with 15 kids in the class neither was an easy task!). Antonio’s face upon opening a poo nappy for the first time (which he quickly passed to someone else) was hilarious and all the nurses were laughing. He somehow managed to never change a poo nappy in the whole time we were there . Surprisingly Angie has become a pro at this and does not even gip anymore!!

In our first couple of weeks a baby called Kiara was adopted by her Granddad and taken to La Paz to live. Although it was sad to see her go, we are happy she will now have a better life. We looked after 6 babies aged 6-10 months and 8 toddlers aged 1-2 and each with their own unique little personalities.

Miguel – Very quiet and smiley baby.
Israel – Always smiling even when sick.
Juan David & Juan Diego – Twin boys that were very sweet but always set each other off crying.
Noami – Little miss independent, always happy to play on her own but loves a cuddle.
Jose Paco - Very whingey and just learning to walk
Sebastian – Also learning to walk and cries ALL THE TIME!!!
Marcos – At first he cried all day every day, but towards the end of our time became a sweet little boy.
Juan Pablo – Big boy for his age, very robust but a little whinger.
Rodrigo – The clumsiest child ever but always laughing and full of fun, unless a kid takes a toy off of him, and then he cries and cries! On the plus side his first proper word was Angie.
Rocio Belem – Aka Jekyll and Hyde! One day she is a little brat who shakes her head all day and moans but other days she is a little angel. A very clever little girl who picks up everything you tell her.
Camila – A bit of a biter but can also be very sweet. Does however love to throw a tantrum when she does not get her own way!
Cristian – Cute little boy but an attention seeker, who throws himself on the ground if you do not pick him up or give him what he wants.

DORA (OUR FAVOURITE!) – When we arrived she was always scowling and always on her own a lot. We created a very strong bond with her and she soon began to interact with us and the other kids and now all she does is smile giggle and try to talk! In the time we have been there she has gone from lying on her back to sitting up on her own standing (with assistance) and nearly crawling, our clever little angel! We really wanted to bring her back to England and made the decision to try and adopt her. We spoke to the staff but found she was not up for adoption as she (like a number of the children) has parents but was taken off them by the government along with her 3 year old sister Casandra. Her parents never used to visit and then one day tried to kidnap her and are now banned from seeing her. Despite not being able to see her they refuse to allow her to be adopted so she will be suck at the orphanage! 

We were meant to leave after a month but were so attached to Dora we stayed another week. We would have stayed longer however we are starting to run out of time to cover the countries we want to so had to prize ourselves away. It was an emotional last day with Angie in floods of tears and we found it almost impossible to say goodbye to our little Dora, who almost seemed to sense we had to go as she would not let go of our hands when we were stroking her in her cot.