Mon. 29th October 2012
The day began with me hiding under the covers as Dave got up early for his Paragliding trip. I had a more leisurely, if not mundane, start to the day hanging around until 9am to collect our laundry, which had been dropped off at a laundry somewhere in town by our Rep yesterday. Once this was finally accomplished and all of our group of five were ready at about 10:15am we hit town for a tour of the main sites.
This initially meant flagging down a taxi and us all squeezing in to head 5 or 7 km out of town, depending on which tourist literature you believed, to Palacio de la Glorieta. This was owned by a wealthy entrepreneur but is now part of a Military school. It has three towers built based on European buildings, including one like Big Ben. According to our guide map this was open daily, but once we arrived we found it was shut on Mondays so we had to be content with a walk around the outside, which was disappointing.
The next challenge was to get back to town as there were no taxis, so we had to catch the local bus for the princely sum of 1.5 Bol or 15p each. Luckily we had two Spanish speakers amongst us who could ask the driver to let us know when we reached the Cemetery, which was our next stop.
This was quite a moving and interesting experience as the smaller “graves” were a showcase for the deceased with toys for children, flowers, gifts and even photographs displayed. There were also grander mausoleums for wealthier families and groups of people such as nuns. In addition there were gardens of neatly well kept flowers and it was quite quiet and peaceful walking around. As some of the memorials were high off the ground people would walk past with ladders so they could reach them and leave fresh flowers or even give them a new coat of paint. Outside the Cemetery were stalls of bright flowers for sale and also vases.
We then walked back the centre of town, through groups of school children on their way home after morning lessons, to visit Parque Bolivar. This houses a mini Eiffel tower, which you can climb but it is not high enough for any spectacular views.
As this is back in the centre of town all the surrounding buildings are white, which gives it a clean feel. Sucre is known as the White City and despite what my free “Countries of the world” App on my phone says this is the Capital of Bolivia and not La Paz!
A leisurely lunch followed whilst waiting for Dave who returned from his paragliding over an hour later than advertised (Bolivian Time strikes again). Not a bad mornings sightseeing for less than a tenner, Dave’s morning however was a bit more expensive with his paragliding trip.
This evening was time to say goodbye to Sucre, our new Belgium friends and the three “newcomers” who had joined us for the Bolivian piece of our trip as well as our Canadian guide who were heading back to La Paz in the morning. The service in the restaurant was the quickest yet – only 30 minutes for our main course!