Still feeling the after effects of being vibrated down a mountain a few days before, we had a day to kill before our El Dorado night bus to Bolivia’s ‘official’ capital, Sucre. Rather than sit in a coffee shop and eat cake all day, we booked ourselves onto another Red Cap walking tour, this time of La Paz’s massive cemetery and a trip on the cable car up to El Alto – La Paz’s poorer sister city – to the huge Sunday market.

La Paz’s Cementerio General is a bit different to the graveyards we have back home. Death is seen much more as ‘the next step’ in life rather than the end of the road that it is in Western culture, so cemeteries are a combination of mourning and celebration, giving them a really unique atmosphere. We stopped just past the entrance amongst the towering graves for an explanation of a slightly more gruesome aspect of the strange amalgamation of Catholicism and local shamanic religious culture – the Ñatitas. A Ñatita (meaning – snub nose) is the skull of a deceased person which is kept in an altar in the home and serves as a guardian against bad things happening to you. Daily offerings are made to your Ñatita to keep them happy and to make sure good luck keeps coming your way. Offerings include booze, money, cigarettes, sweets, chocolate….all the good stuff basically. Then, on the 8^th November every year, people from La Paz bring their Ñatitas to the cemetery so that others can come and be blessed. The Ñatitas are dressed in hats and clothes, even sunglasses, and placed on altars around the cemetery before being surrounded by flowers and offerings, with people hoping that the Ñatita will make their wish come true or bless their family. Often the skulls are passed down from generation to generation and once a Ñatita is yours, it’s yours for life. If you don’t get along with it, or if it doesn’t get along with you, you are allowed to give it away but selling it is strictly forbidden. Oddly enough if you do want to acquire a Ñatita, paying a larger sum to your local coroner will secure you a Ñatita of higher social standing, a doctor or lawyer Ñatita for example. As you can imagine, the Catholic church doesn’t really approve of not burying these skulls but they tend to turn a blind eye in order to maintain a healthy relationship with the local indigenous communities.

 

The cemetery itself houses thousands of graves. Families purchase their own slot in the wall, with the higher slots being cheaper due to the need to climb a ladder to pay your respects. In general families will pay to keep the slot for around 2 years before allowing the payments to lapse, you get 2 months’ grace period before your family member is removed and cremated. It’s interesting to see the differences in the wealth of the families buying the graves, with fancy marble and glass fronted plots next to those filled in with cement and words crudely drawn into it; serving as a morbid reminder that no matter who we are in life, we all kick the bucket in the end my friend! Walking around the place you can sometimes see small pieces of paper attached to the graves, our guide informed us that these were eviction notices – some things never change. On a slightly more cheery note, the cemetery is also home to some cracking murals. We were told that there is an art contest every year and the winners are permitted to paint a mural in the cemetery. They’ve even started some on the roofs of the graves as well so that when you take the cable car over it, it looks a lot less grey. The contest recently opened up to foreigners so if you’ve always dreamed of having your art on show, surrounded by a whole bunch of skeletons then you know where to go!

 

Having had our fill of the macabre, our next stop was the El Alto market. Our guide warned us that pickpocketing is rife at this market, particularly of gringos. Some of their favourite tricks are to drop something, then when you stop to help them they steal your stuff, or someone will throw a fake baby at you and when you catch it, they take the opportunity to help themselves to anything in your pockets. For the most part, both Peru and Bolivia have been very safe, seemingly due to the fact that tourism now makes up such a large portion of their economy and if they get a reputation for being a bit dodgy then the lovely western currency won’t make its way to that part of the city. Rucksacks secured to our fronts and pockets emptied of anything other than snotty tissues, we took the red cable car up to El Alto. The market itself on a Sunday stretches to around 5 kilometres, making it allegedly the largest in the whole of South America. Selling everything from socks to car parts to cameras stolen from tourists down in La Paz and unfortunately some endangered animals as well. Luckily we didn’t delve too far in so we didn’t see any of the more upsetting things BUT, in a Katy first, I was the victim of a pickpocketing attempt! A chap dropped his hat in front of me and bent down to pick it up, preventing me from going forward, then before I knew it, a large woman in black was fiddling around in my pockets. I hope she enjoyed my snotty tissues. I quickly barged forward to re-join the rest of our tour group and excitedly explained to Dave that I had just been pickpocketed! Not that she managed to get anything. We were largely left alone to explore the market after that but it was definitely an experience. Opportunistic crime like that can largely be forgiven in my opinion, if you’re stupid enough to walk around with expensive gear within easy reach in one of the poorest countries in the world then really, it’s to be expected. Besides, give it a few days and you can pop back to the market to buy your stuff back. Apparently you can get some really good deals on technology stolen from gringos but we didn’t stick around long enough to find out. With the tour largely over, we parted ways with our guide and our group and headed back down to the relative safety of La Paz where we stopped at a little Mexican place for dinner before heading to the bus station to catch the long anticipated night bus.

We’d heard many a horror story regarding Bolivia’s buses but for the most part, our experience overall has been a positive one. The night coaches for El Dorado are double decker and can probably fit around 30 people. We were elated to see that our bus was FULL CAMA. This means that the seat reclines all the way back to 180 degrees with a little foot rest that folds up, giving you about as close to an actual bed as you can get. We’d heard rumours of these mystical full cama buses but were firmly told that they didn’t actually exist and the companies that advertised them were just a way to get a bit more money out of the gringos. We had paid around £20 each for the privilege and let me tell you dear reader it was worth every penny. The only slight downside was just how hot the bus was. We’d been told Bolivian coach drivers like to crank up the AC so had prepared for a chilly night but it was SO warm that by the end of the 12 hour journey we were both feeling very groggy. BUT we had arrived in the beautiful capital of Sucre which could only mean one thing – DINOSAURS.

 

One of the unfortunate downsides of taking night buses is that you end up at your destination incredibly early in the morning and hotels often won’t allow you to check in until after midday. We’ve been incredibly lucky so far (in no small part I imagine due to it being the off season) that the hotels we’ve arrived at have all had our rooms ready when we arrived. El Olivo Viejo was no exception and even had the added bonus of a beautiful pussy cat and a big softy Labrador to welcome us. We were even more pleasantly surprised to find that we had been upgraded to the rooftop suite which included a kitchen and a cracking view over the brilliant white city buildings, as well as the surrounding mountains. After a shower and a nap, we decided to head out to a local ‘gastro-pub’ style restaurant for dinner before researching a walking tour of the city for the following day (as is tradition).

The following morning, bellies full of the hotel’s great breakfast and having bid hasta luego to our feline friend, we headed to Condor Café, a local non-profit co-op offering walking tours, Spanish lessons and a range of veggie dishes. We arrived just after 9am, ready for our 9:30 walking tour. Except there was no 9:30 walking tour. Unbeknownst to us, it had, since the last Trip Advisor review was listed, moved to 10am. Ho hum. We sat outside the café under the blue Sucre sky and Dave took the opportunity to go on a little trip to try and find some replacement sunglasses for the ones he snapped during his little brush with death down Death Road. Much to the frustration of both Dave and his eyes, we seemed to have found the only street in Sucre that didn’t have a little knock off sunglasses stand. He bravely soldiered on as the clock ticked to 10am and our walking tour finally began. A group of around 10 of us were led through the city by Alistair, whose English wasn’t fantastic but we muddled through. He first took us to a local weaving shop (oh goody another one…) featuring products made by the local indigenous communities around La Paz. Unlike Peru, the communities of Bolivia’s Altiplano use far more muted colours, owing I would imagine to the lack of diversity in its flora and therefore a lack of colours to be obtained from various plants in the region. Still, they were very interesting and had we had the room in our suitcases, probably would have brought a few bits home. Our next stop on the tour was the main square – Plaza 25 de Mayo – so named for the Chuquisaca (modern day Sucre) Revolution of 1809 which followed the fall of King Ferdinand VII of Spain, leading local residents to question the legitimacy of its rulers and to posit their independence. It’s often referred to as the first step in the Spanish American wars of independence, so that’s pretty cool! At the time of our stay in Sucre, Bolivia was commemorating (or perhaps commiserating?) its loss of the Pacific Ocean following the Pacific War with Chile in 1883. ‘El Die del Mar’ or The Day of the Sea is marked every year on the 23^rd March with parades through the streets with local military operations as well as local schools and marching bands. It’s an interesting story which others online are able to explain much better than myself but one interesting point is that in 2013, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, petitioning them for the return of the ocean. Sadly, or perhaps not, depending on your views on the whole matter, the petition was rejected. The Bolivians are a resilient people though and they are now planning a new legal challenge. Hopefully one day they will once again regain their access to the sea. Unfortunately with all this going on it meant we couldn’t hear a word Alistair was saying so we quickly moved on to a local chocolate shop – Para Ti.

 

Para-Ti is a Sucre run chocolate factory with several shops around the city. The cacao is sourced in the Bolivian jungle and processed to exceptionally high standards before being finished off by European trained chocolatiers – so it’s not bad I guess. We were allowed to sample one chocolate each as part of our tour, I went for coconut, Dave went for pistachio – yum. Vowing to come back at a later date, we moved on towards Parque Bolivar, so named for Simon Bolivar, largely credited with liberating vast swathes of South America. It’s a really pretty park with French influences, including a mini Eiffel tower in the centre, though this one is bright orange and doesn’t really do the original any justice. Each to their own I suppose. Following our jaunt around this pretty park, we were herded onto a bus where we headed up to one of the higher parts of the city where a lovely view, and some booze, awaited us. With our tour guide safely leading the way, we wandered into what at first glance just looked like someone’s back yard but it soon became apparent we were at one of Bolivia’s famous “Chicharias” where we got to sample some very strong Chicha. We took our seats in the corner but not before the local drunks welcomed us to Bolivia and tried and failed to chat up some of the women in our group. Chicha is a fermented corn drink that tastes, oddly enough, like scrumpy. It’s quite potent but we enjoyed our small glass before heading outside to play what we were told was a traditional Bolivian drinking game. The premise of the game is fairly simple. A metal frog around the size of a grapefruit sits atop a metal frame with a shelf on top containing various holes. You’re given a cup full of coins and the aim of the game is to throw the coins at the frog and the holes, with each awarding various points. If you manage to get a coin in the frog’s mouth then you win, otherwise the person with the most amount of points is the winner. I wasn’t very good. Dave was ok. The winner was a tiny blonde woman from the USA who I suspect has a long history of playing beer pong so we weren’t too disheartened. Our tour finished up at a fabulous view over the city, next to a lovely restaurant called Café Mirador which was beckoning us to stop and have a beer, so we did. After enjoying our meal and with the weather similar to a hot Mediterranean summer we decided to head back to the hotel, but not before a chap approached us and, for the 99999999999^th time this trip, asked us if we’d like to buy some weed, or some cocaine. He was very polite, apologising for disturbing us in the first place and spoke perfect English but unfortunately neither of these two criteria were sufficient for us to risk a stay in San Pedro prison, so we declined. Heading back to the apartment, we stopped briefly to buy some totally legitimate Rui Foo (I think they’re supposed to be Ray Bans?!) sunglasses for Dave, as well the necessary supplies to make ourselves nachos for dinner. The rest of our evening was spent drinking beer and catching up on Star Trek because that’s what you do when you travel half way around the world, right?

Sunday morning arrived and the beautiful weather continued. Sucre is a particularly radiant city in the sunshine, with the light bouncing off the pearlescent white colonial style buildings, highlighted against the clear blue sky. We headed down to the main square where a bus was waiting to take us to Tarabuco, a market town around 1h15m drive away from Sucre. Tarabuco is home to a large Sunday market where you can buy everything from the normal tourist rubbish to DVDs of Cholitas dancing, to shoes, to cows, and everything in between. We were greeted at what we were told is the only restaurant in town (read, the only gringo friendly restaurant in town) by a radiant woman named Katy (!) who was absolutely delighted to find out that we shared a name. She expressed her love of the English language before explaining everything we could have ever possibly wanted to know about Tarabuco and the market and how to say “no thanks, maybe later” in Quechua (which we have now forgotten). After wandering round the market and picking up a few souvenirs for some lucky people back home, we headed back to the restaurant where Katy greeted us once again and we sat down to enjoy a 3 course lunch for 40 Bobs (around £4.40). The meal was peppered with Katy apologising for the delay every time she brought out a dish, despite the fact that there was no delay. This woman was as mad as a box of frogs but quite possibly the nicest person in the whole of Bolivia, if not the entirety of South America. The restaurant was family run but she explained that she was an engineer, heavens knows what she was doing in this tiny little mountain town. After lunch we were treated to a display of local dances by some young girls from the town. They looked about as enthused as teenagers do when they have to do anything mildly inconvenient, but we gave them a few Bobs for the trouble. We bid farewell to our eccentric host and headed back to Sucre with our bellies full and our minds open and in the evening enjoyed some pasta and a few rounds of gin (that’s the card game not the drink) before bed. And that’s when the fun began…

 

The following 3 days I had the absolute pleasure of being entirely bed bound due to a delightful bought of travellers’ stomach. Fear not dear reader, I do not wish to relive the experience anymore than you want to read about it so I shall simply say that we did not get to see nearly as much of Sucre as we would have liked but that Nurse Dave was on top form as always. I’m sure I’ll get the chance to return the favour when we head to Asia.

It was now Thursday and, despite not feeling 100%, I was determined to go and see these flipping dinosaurs if it killed me. Cretaceous Park is situated next to a working quarry around 5km outside Sucre’s town centre. It is home to some delightfully derpy life size models of the dinosaurs that inhabited the region many many moons ago as well as its star attraction, the world’s largest fossilised remains of dinosaur footprints. Over 5000 individual footprints from at least 8 species can be seen in the 1500m long cliff. It’s really something that needs to be seen to be believed. At 110m high it stands imposing over the rest of the park. With our entrance ticket we also had the opportunity to get up close and personal with these footprints. Sadly a few years ago a large section was lost due to water damage and the park is now seeking funding to cover the entire section with a protective layer of plastic. They’re nearly there so hopefully they can prevent any more of these amazing footprints from being lost. Being a huge dinosaur nerd, a gift to the gift shop was inevitable and I was heartbroken to find that the only t-shirts on offer were child sized (I can’t think why!). So after acquiring a new deck of playing cards, we headed back to Sucre where we finally ventured to the local Para-Ti chocolate shop and acquired some goodies for when my stomach settled down a bit. We then headed back to the hotel for our final night of luxury before our journey to Uyuni and slumming it in the salt flats for 3 days, but that’s another story for another time….