Sucre

All kinds of potato

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My flight from La Paz, Bolivia to Sucre, Bolivia would have to be the scariest ever that I’ve taken.. Flying over here is an ‘experience’ at the best of times, especially at high altitudes… the planes come in so very fast to land, because of the thin air so I’m told, that it is a bit concerning, but the la Paz/Sucre flight took the cake..

La Paz airport is at about 4200mtres and it was definitely a ‘sports bra’ take-off with the bumpy run-way and it was a really really long and slow take off, but once in the air all seemed fine. Coming into Sucre however things got a bit odd…. We banked around mountains that seemed just metres away and then we started to accelerate nose-down before the pilot must have decided perhaps we were a bit too close as we suddenly accelerated nose-up.. we then started to be very close to the ground and going at a very fast pace when everyone started to look at each other to see whether other people were just as concerned and the passenger next to me said, “I really hope there is a runway beneath us” and a couple of seconds later we hit the ground so hard that we bounced up in the air for a good 3-4 seconds before we hit the ground again.. we were going so fast that it took a long time for the brakes to kick in and finally we came to a stop…

Village housing

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Anyway, onto Sucre! Sucre is the capital of Bolivia and is a very pretty city with great colonial architecture and a relaxed pace.. I was only here for 2 days but the timing was perfect as I was there on a Sunday when a market is on in a town 1.5hrs away. We got a taxi there and the scenery was stunning, lots of mountains, valleys, rocks and villages. The market was very cool with all sorts of stuff for sale, touristy stuff of course, but also all the goods that the locals would need, food, clothes, toys, light bulbs, etc… The locals are trucked in literally and all the streets are full of stalls. Narelle and I wandered around and picked up a few bits and pieces and we also took a chance and had lunch in the ‘food hall’ with the locals for 2 boliviano (about 30 cents). While walking around the market I was quite glad I’m 5 foot nothing as the whole town was set up for people my height… even I had to be careful not to get my eye poked out by a wayward canopy..

Wall of dino footprints

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The next day we went out to the new tourist attraction of the dinosaur footprints. This was very cool as they were only discovered in the last decade. They were found in a quarry and the footprints were made in a lake bed millions of years ago and the march of time and movement of plates has made the lake bed now a vertical wall with rows of different dinosaur footprints appearing to climb the walls.. It was impressive to see, even if to just confirm that yes the earth is very very very old!!! The area is still a functioning quarry so who know what else is hidden there, but the site is also now a kitsch attraction with very amusing models of dinosaurs (including a bit of dino porn if you’re into that sort of thing..).