We arrived safely at Sucre at around 1.00 pm and caught a taxi to our hotel (Hotel Independencia) where we met up with our new guide Vladimir and 5 new group members who had just arrived from La Paz. Justin our guide from Patagonia was at the hotel too so we had a good catch up chat and arranged to meet later in the day for a drink before he leaves.
Sucre is Bolivia’s official capital (not La Paz!) situated on the altiplano at an altitude of 2800 m above sea level. Sucre is a small and beautiful city reflecting much of its Spanish historical importance. It was the headquarters for the Royal Spanish Court which ruled over much of South America in the 18th century. The city is named after Simon Bolivar’s second in command General José de Sucre.
We spent the afternoon wandering around the central city area visiting the cathedral and local market area. A protest march was taking place with workers on fixed wages demanding pay increases to cover inflation and additional taxes.
The local indigenous people are often sighted in their traditional clothing with wide brimmed hats commonplace, however they don’t like to be photographed.
On Wednesday morning we spent a couple of hours fixing up our entry stamps for our passports as we’d crossed the border from Brazil to Bolivia when the border officials for Bolivia were absent. After a bit if fiddling around with obtaining photocopies of our train tickets (to verify our entry date) we were declared no longer “illegal immigrants”.
We then wandered around the central part of Sucre to observe the markets and visited the Simon Bolivar park.
In the afternoon a group of six of us went for a 3 hour quad-cycle trip in the hills surrounding Sucre. We had lots of fun and Corinne who’d never ridden a motor-bike before showed high proficiency by the end of the trip. The path we followed led us through suburban areas with mud bricked home and small farm areas where dogs would rush out and bark at our quad-cycles.
We then visited the Spanish San Felipe Neri Monastery and climbed the bell tower which gave us a good view over the city. The monastery is now a Catholic girls’ school. We capped off the day with a visit to yet another church, the San Lazoro Church built in 1544. The main purpose of this visit was to view the sunset over the city.