Sucre/ La Paz

The original plan was to go straight from La Paz to Uyuni, where the famous salt flats and other geomorpholigical phenomena are located. But Uyuni is even higher than La Paz, and I was still suffering from the altitude, so we decided to go to Sucre (which is only about 9000 ft, and which we had hearts very good things about) first.

Picture albums for Sucre and La Paz

Sucre is the constitutional capital of Bolivia, and still the seat of the judicial branch (the executive and legislative branches, as well as most business, are in La Paz). Sucre was also the city that started all of the South American revolutions against the Spanish in the 19th century-Bolivar and all his friends/fellow revolutionaries went to school here and got the ball rolling. Sucre is a lovely city and UNESCO World Heritage site, full of whitewashed colonial architecture and pretty little plazas.

We spent three days in Sucre wandering around, visiting museums of the Revolution, Indigenous art, and archaeology. We also took a walking tour of the city with a (highly recommended) agency called Condor Trekkers (they also organized our hiking trip to the Cordillera de Los Frailes). We stayed in an adequate hostel called Travellers Guesthouse, which weirdly made you provide your own toilet paper. Omar, the owner, made dinner for us two nights, and it just so happened that two of the guest played Irish fiddle (strangely one was Swiss) so we got an impromptu concert one night.

Mark has already covered our eventful and short hiking trip, so I'll skip that. We got back from that trip with no end in sight to the bloqueo and had to spend four more nights in Sucre before we could get a plane out, which kind of sucked because there wasn't much left to do there. I spent the first few days recovering, and we spent some time visiting the local markets.

Finally on Wednesday we made it back to La Paz for one night before heading to Puno, Peru (we decided to skip Uynui all together because we didn't want to risk even more days of being stuck in Bolivia due to the bloqueos). We had learned previously that one of the owners of Noma (that famous restaurant in Copenhagen) had just opened a restaurant in La Paz focusing on gourmetifying local food (there is also a cooking/waitering school). Restaurant Gustu had been open for only two weeks when we got there, and there were clearly some kinks to be worked out, but the food was fabulous. I especially enjoyed my llama steak with some kind of almond and banana sauce (sounds weird but was delicious). Mark had a rabbit and choclo (very big corn) dish with a corn cream sauce (no dairy) that was also great. As usual, the Bolivian wine sucked, but they made decent cocktails. The food was great, but I'm not sure how I feel about a restaurant, started by a Dane, that is supposed to be "preserving local food traditions" and yet charges the equivalent of two weeks income for an average family for one meal for two.

Thursday we took the bus from La Paz to Puno, Peru, via Desaguadero. We were promised (and paid for) a real bus with an on board toilet. What we got was a minibus into which we were crammed like sardines for the three hour drive to the border, where we were instructed to leave our stuff (sketchy) cross the border, and find a corresponding bus on the other side onto which our bags were apparently going to be delivered. Now, this is not a border crossing like US-Canada. This is a whole town which you have to wander aimlessly through until you find a shack that looks vaguely official and hopefully has some customs agents. Then you cross a bridge and wander aimlessly through the Peruvian side of town until you find the Peruvian agents, and then you wander through town some more, looking for a pile of bags that hopefully contain yours. We did, fortunately, but next time I would definitely not let the bags out of my sight, regardless of what the driver said. Then they loaded us onto another mini bus for the two hour drive to Puno. Let us just say that Bolivian buses are not like Argentinian buses.