Given our late flight we didn't get into our hostel in Sucre until the early evening. It was a pretty cool place, with a bar and café area on the ground floor then 2 levels of rooms on top all around a central courtyard, plus a garden area out the back which had another bar under construction. That night was an all-you-can-eat Italian buffet which we partook in, managing to scoff about 3 plates each of pizza, pasta, salad and garlic bread each, making sure to get our moneys worth.

In the morning, after a generous breakfast from the breakfast buffet, we set off to explore Sucre. It was quite unfortunate that we have already seen so many Colonial cities, as this one would have been really impressive if it were among the first we visited. Our expectations have increased a little during the past year.

The buildings are all white and well maintained, with lovely architecture, tiled roofs, wooden balconies and black lamps. Its a very picturesque place, especially with a blue sky for the backdrop. We just wished there weren't so many damned power lines in the way of our photos! The black power lines are even more evident against a while building. Someone should has a word to UNESCO.

Our exploration followed a route that would take us past see of the important sights of Sucre, such as the Plaza 25 de Mayo, Iglesia San Francisco, the main Government buildings, the University, more churches, etc.

We enquired with the travel agent in our hostel about available tours and thought a tour to nearby Maragua sounded good, with its meteorite crater and some trekking in the area. We decided to pay him another visit the next day so he could see if anyone else was interested.

Of course the next day the travel agent was no where to be found. We found another agency that offered the same tour but the guy was quite rude, so in the end we missed out on that tour.

We walked to the Recoleta area, where there was (amongst hoards of little market stalls) a lookout over the city and a lovely big plaza. Plus there was a nice place for lunch where we stopped to relax for a while.

Then we traversed back through the city to Parque Bolivar, a chaotic place where you could rent a children's motorised car, horse, or even a quad bike(!) to fang around the oval shaped pathway surrounding the park. There was a structure resembling a mini Eiffel tower, a great looking playground, fairy floss and all sorts of unhealthy food options. No wonder the kids were all going nuts!

The next day we visited Parque Cretácico, something of a mini Jurassic Park on the grounds of a concrete factory at the outskirts of town. Basically, the cement factory in the early 90's uncovered a bunch of dinosaur footprints on a layered and sandy rock wall which is now open to visitors and accompanied by a tacky little dinosaur themed park.

Upon arrival we were told to hurry as a tour was about to start. We high-tailed it up the hill, grabbed our required hard hats, then stood around for half an hour waiting for the tour to start. Typical South America. Hurry up and wait.

When the tour did start we made our way down towards the base of the rock wall. It sits at a close to vertical angle, having undergone some folding due to tectonic plate activity since it was once flat and walked upon by dinosaurs over millions of years. Part way down we stopped to receive an explanation of the types of dinosaur footprint present in this area.

At the bottom of the wall we were given another explanation then left to explore, our only instructions not to touch the wall. From a distance we had been very sceptical, as the rows of footprints looked suspiciously non-dinosaur like. However upon closer inspection you could see the shapes a little more distinctly and gauge the size of the prints. Perhaps they really were from dinosaurs!

After making our way back up the hill we had a look at the life-sized dinosaur reproductions with their big pointed teeth, strange shapes, long necks and flippery thingemyjiggers, then decided we had seen enough before taking the bus back to town.

We had one more day in Sucre and decided we should spend it in a café that had reasonable internet by Bolivian standards. We booked the next steps of our trip, posted some blogs, watched the Dakar Rally on TV, and of course drank coffee and ate cheesecake.

We should mention we did quite well eating in Sucre, finding it much cheaper than other parts of Bolivia which was fortunate since our hostel didn't have a kitchen. Sucre was probably the only city in Bolivia we found more affordable than anywhere else in South America.

LAPFWT