Bolivia’s beautiful colonial town of Sucre
Sucre with its 300.000 inhabitants is the capital of Bolivia. In case you did not know or thought (like I did) that La Paz is the capital, don’t worry about it. Literally every local in Sucre will tell you. Even before or just shortly after a “Buenos dias”. There seems to be a bit of (politically motivated) rivalry between the cities and Sucre claims to be the most beautiful and livable one. Fair enough!
How to get to Sucre?
From Uyuni: most buses from Uyuni go to Potosi, which is a 3 hours drive. Apparently there are some direct connections to Sucre, but they are not offered every day. When we traveled Bolivia there were daily protests. Bolivians truly stand up to their beliefs and I had the feeling they protested against everything. The current president in general, a newly introduced law, an abandoned law, a political suggestion etc. So there happened to be transportation protests on our travel day to Sucre. It was the 3 hours driving distance between Potosi and Sucre that was blocked. But we were dedicated to get to Sucre that day and took the first bus from Uyuni to Potosi and planned to figure it out from there.
We were not keen on staying in Potosi, even though we only heard good stories of the offered mining tours there. If you are interested though you can read more here.
For me personally it was a pretty bad traveling day. I had serious stomach aches and could hardly sit still on the bus. I jumped off the bus as soon as it stopped for which I considered was a toilet break. Luckily Georg stayed on the bus and intervened as soon as the driver wanted to continue the ride, while I was still sitting on a thing the Bolivians call toilet, somewhere next to the street in the middle of nowhere.
As soon as we arrived in Potosi we finally realised how serious the protests were. We could not find buses or any type of cars in the city. At some point we found private transport companies that offered a drive despite the blocked road. Obviously for five times the price of a normal bus ride. After 3 hours of waiting we could finally get on such a transport. It seemed to be destiny as the shared ride with Eva and Pascal was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. It was especially the couple of hundred metres of walking through another blocked passage of the street that has literally “uns zusammen geschweißt”.
Where to stay in Sucre?
We checked in at the same hostel with our new friends, which was the Spanish Friends hostel. It is run by lovely Gaby, who was kind and helpful throughout our whole stay. The hostel offered Spanish lessons and we decided to spend a week in Sucre to finally improve our Spanish skills. In general Sucre is a good place to learn Spanish. From all South American countries, Bolivians have the clearest pronunciation and you can get a private teacher for only 4,50 EUR per hour.
What to do in Sucre?
Sucre itself is a beautiful, colonial city, also refered to as “la ciudad blanca” as all buildings are painted white. The town is not too small and not big and we felt a little like home from the very first day.
Besides learning Spanish our main activity was EATING! Either by cooking ourselves in the hostel kitchen or, preferably, going out for cheap and delicious menu deals. There are countless international and hipster style cafés, restaurants and bars, offering 3 course menus for only 3,50 EUR. Food shopping to cook ourselves was hardly any cheaper. Also as a vegetarian you find a lot of choices and delicious dishes in Sucre.
Our favorite and most visited places included:
- Condor Cafe: all vegetarian food and very comfortable place. At the end of the day the owners hand out left-over food to the ones who cannot afford it. The menu deals are great and filling! The a la carte dishes not so much.
- Chifa & Thai: we went to the Thai and Chinese restaurant at least 4 times. The choices for the very affordable menu is great, always including a vegetarian option and lot of different side dishes. Try the Tumbo juice!
- Cafe Florin: if you are looking for good coffee, fast internet and delicious cocktails this is the right place. Only for food you find better options close by. The cafe turns to a bar in the evenings. You can either go crazy on the dance floor in the patio or sit inside and play cards for 5 hours… Any guess what we went for?
- Dona Lia: all the vegetarian food was too healthy for the boys. Luckily Dona Lia could help out with chicken, chicken and chicken!
- Bocata Pizzeria: Sunday was our gang’s Pizza day! #yaay! We hesitated a little to go to Bocata for Pizza as the restaurant was empty by the time we arrived. But it was the one and only right decision. A family size pizza is enough for two and very delicious! By the time we finished dinner the place was completely full. The pizza was not cheap though, but we found out so isn’t any (good) pizza in Bolivia.
Mas mercados
Sucre too is a good place for shopping, mainly on the many markets across town. There is the Mercado Negro for clothes, the Mercado Central is good for food shopping and at the Mercado Campesino you can pretty much buy everything. We especially fell in love with the fruit juices in Bolivia, even though we could not figure out the difference between “zumo” and “jugo” up until now. Additionally, be aware of the low or European-unused standards of hygienic as mentioned in this post. On Sundays you can drive an hour via van to the famous Tarabuco market, which I am sure is more fun with less rain and cold, which we had that day.
Buena vista
From Recoleta square you get the best view across the city. It is a 5-10 minutes uphill walk from our hostel. There is a nice little cafe at the edge of the plaza, where you can have a good cup of coffee while enjoying the scenery panorma view.
Dinosaur (and playground) love
One main attraction of Sucre are the dinosaur footsteps. When taking a walk through town we ended up in the dinosaur children playground and decided this was good enough. The theme park was not only impressing the kids there.
Besides the bus ride and entrance fee for gazing at the real footsteps from a fairly high distance for only 5 minutes seemed to expensive. We were proven right in our decision when we saw dinosaur footsteps one week later in Torotoro. You can read more on that here.
Well, I did not think I come up with enough content for a Sucre post, but now I am glad I did. After all I’d say that Sucre is a must see in Bolivia. If you plan to go to Bolivia, also check out some useful travel tips and information about traveling Bolivia in genere here.
PS: BIG THANKS to Eva and Pascal for taking and sharing the pictures!! Huge step in our friendship =)