The Adventurous Sucre

Potosi - Sucre, four hours of bus, 156 km, from 4600m to 2780m above sea level

   Arrival in Sucre, 1pm, freedom.

The city is nice, clean, not much polluted, full of light and, the best, warm!

Here you don't need to sleep with four covers and three sweaters, and you can even walk around in short and flip-flops. Freedom.

I meet Angie in the bus, an australian girl, we share the cab to our hostels. We leave our stuff there, take a shower, and meet again for lunch. On the way there, we meet three french girls that Angie knows for having done the Salt Flats of Uyuni with them the week before: Laura, Aurélie and Sophie.

I am smiling again, the sky doesn't show the smallest cloud, nothing is nicer than that. After lunch, Angie and I go visit the mirador of the city. It doesn't seem so but we are still quite high in altitude and going up isn't that easy, but the view is worth it.

At night we meet at Angie's and the girl's hostel for a "bolivan dances" night.

   The next morning, I go to the street market to buy some fruits. Let's talk about this market: the women selling fruits offer you pieces of fruits hoping to get you to buy them. And they are indeed delicious, the cantaloupe is juicy and the mango is sweet...

In front of them are the poultry sellers. Here it smells more of cold chicken flesh than of nicely grilled chicken like in French markets. Behind are the red meat sellers, with their big meat pieces directly set on the white ceramic of the booths, and the flies are more than happy with the situation. A few corpses of goat, open in two, still with their skin, decorate the alleys. Let me tell you that the place is not made for a vegetarian sensitive to the animal's well being...

On top of the stairs, you will find all the vegetables, the black advocadoes, well ripe and delicious. There are women sitting in corners selling limes and choclo (white corn with very large seeds). A bit further, are the soups, made of vegetables or with one or two chicken leg in it. Going back down, to the back patio through the cakes alley, you will find the andine potatoes sellers, and in front of them, the juice women are standing a bit higher behing all their fruits, and their juices are delicious. They will serve you a full glass and then will tell you "un poquito mas ?" and will fill up your glass again, for the same price obviously.

At night I meet the french girls for a drink and then we go to bed early because the next day we are going early to a handcraft market.

   So in the morning, 8:30am, I meet the girls in the street and Florie, a friend, who just arrived in Sucre after her night bus. We leave by cab and then take a small bus for one hour and a half from Sucre to the handcraft market of Tarabuco, only there on Sundays in a very tiny bolivian village. We walk around the alleys, buy a few things and have a drink in front of a small restaurant before going back by bus. Oh this bus, or combi actually. A full adventure. Or as some would say "TIB" (This Is Bolivia), as an explication to any thing odd and weird seen in Bolivia. The road to the village is in the mountains, we are going up and so obviously with quite big turns. But we are in Bolivia, and we really start to think that the combi and bus drivers never learned that it was very dangerous to pass a car in a turn, and even more on a mountain road. We have been scared a few times during that ride, actually almost hit another combi that was on the wrong side of the road in a turn... But we arrived all well!

At night we go have dinner in a small coffee shop, with a glass of red wine. Bolivian wine is far from the best, way too sweet, but it feels good anyway!

   Monday morning I meet Florie for lunch with Loic and Geraldine, two french speakers from my hostel, in a very good vegetarian restaurant, and then we go on a desperate search for macrame strings (to make bracelets). After our long search, we go have a cold drink at the three french's hostel to get away from Sucre's warmth. The girls are back around 5pm, they have dinner and are off to La Paz in the evening. After a few beers, Florie and I go to bed, the next day we will wake up early to go sea waterfalls in the region.

   We meet at 9:30am with Florie and Loic to go take a combi to a small village from where we can start the walk to the waterfalls. As some people told us, the way is not very easy to find but it is doable. So here we go, all three of us, it is about 11am, we ask a few people in the village for the way, each tell us something quite different and always very unclear, like "over there" with a gesture of the arm...

Ok, we try one, two, three small streets, don't find anything, always dead ends. Some people had told us they had been there by the big road, so we get out of the village to go walk on the road.

We walk, walk, and ask our way to a guy in a car, he tells us to go down to the river on the next left turn. We go there and end up in a dead end in front of a cemetery. We try anyway to go a bit further through the vegetation but I am wearing flip-flops, there are huge pines everywhere, one even got stuck into Loic's walking shoe. I care about my feet, we are a bit desperate, it is noon, very warm, we go back to the road.

Some people had told us about a bridge, we see it from afar, walk until there, and ask our way. They tell us to follow the river off the road. We do that and end up, a hundred meters later, in a dead end. Again.

I sit down, start a nap with my head on my knees: my feet are starting to hurt, I am starting to get really pissed, I leave the other two decide for me of the next step.

Ok, we decide to take back the road, further on, Loic asks a woman for the way, she tells us to leave the road on the next left turn and then to go down, that from there we will already see the waterfalls. Finally someone who seems to know what she is talking about. We go there, finally! We see the waterfalls! Far away, indeed, but we see them. We were starting to think that it was a myth told by tourists, that everybody tried, never reached any waterfall and made it up to not seem too dumb...

We sit there under THE one small tree around for some lunch, it is almost 2pm, all three of us our tired. Eating, we get attacked by kind of red ants, we throw them some advocato skin, and in two minutes what was green becomes all red...

Florie and I are not at all motivated to keep going, we would have to go down and the way doesn't seem very easy, and anyway the waterfalls aren't that amazing. So we decide to go back to Sucre, by the road, hoping to hitchhike one of the few cars passing by. Loic keeps going on his own. So here we go, down to the bridge, we wait there for a car in the shadow of a tiny bush. We don't want to walk further as it goes up and is very warm.

   After about twenty minutes waiting without seeing a single car, one passes the other way. It stops and two young guys come out of it. They come and see us, they want some help for an english homework: they film us while we answer to simple questions in english. They are very nice and shy, thank us and leave. The car turns around and they go back our way, but we can see that the car is fully packed already. A bit higher up the road, the youngest gets out and asks us where we want to go. We tell him that we want to reach the next village to take our bus, he tells us to come. We ask him if he is sure there is space for us, he goes to check and tells us it is fine.

Indeed they made us some room. So I sit in the back with Florie on my lap, on our side are two bolivian women in traditional clothing (so with their very large skirts), one of them has a four months old baby in her arms, in front of the other, a four years old girl is standing to leave us some space to sit. In the front, the young with the english homework drives, we think he must be around fifteen years old, and on the last seat, sit his his little brother with another kid on his lap. Yes, you counted right, we were nine in the car. Ok, not all of us grown ups but still! Once again, TIB.

They drop us off in the village and we can finally take our bus back to Sucre.

   Once to my hostel, when Loic comes back, he tells me that the way was actually very easy to take from the village and was only about thirty minutes down to the waterfalls. And the worst is that we almost took it but that we thought it was a dead end...

Whatever, the worst adventures make the best stories!

Wednesday we take our time, go have lunch at the vegetarian place and go have a pastery at the French bakery in my street. We leave at 7pm, driven by Julio Cesar, very nice cab driver who did everything for us to arrive on time for our bus despite the trafic.

And here we go for an eight hours drive to Tupiza in the south.