Day 10 Sucre

Do you like my flowers?  We thought the room needed a little livening up. 

The plan was to try to get out of Sucre today, so we got up early and walked to the bus station again to see if we could get tickets.  Much to our delight, we were successful!  The rate had gone up (from 80 Bs to 122 Bs,) but we were so happy to be moving on we didn't care.  It's not like we had anything against Sucre, but we had places to go and people to see, so we both wanted to get a move on.

Before going back to the hostel, we made a quick stop at the market to get some more of the fresh bunuelos that Jo had brought me the day before.  We were served by the funniest lady ever, who was loud and boisterous and called everyone "papito," and "mi amor."  I liked her just as much as I liked the bunuelos, and that's saying something.

After breakfast, we packed everything up so we could be ready to go.  Here's the hostel where we were staying at.

The plan was to meet the friendly college student, Daniella, who we had met the day before and he would take us to the Seven Falls, an series of , well, seven falls that was about an hour from the city. In the meantime we found some nice Engrish.

Jo and I would have liked this; we are both passionated tourists.

We were both ready to high experiences.

I'm going to fast forward through the next part.  Basically, Seven Falls turned out to be a fail.  The guy came and we tried to take busses to the waterfalls, but we ended up being dropped off out in the middle of nowhere because the busses decided to stop running due to the gasoline fiasco.  Sooo...yeah.  We walked back, paid the guy 20Bs for this time, and tried to come up with a plan B.

We went back to our hostel to see if we could store our bags until our bus left that night.  While we were there, we played with a cutie patootie who insisted Jo hold these magic wands and use them while we played a card game.  Jo obliged.

I bet you can't guess what our plan B ended up being.  Yup, that's right.  More PIGEONS!  We headed back to the plaza to waste some time.  I'm tellin' you right now that we had a lot of free time on our hands and there were an awful lot of hungry pigeons, so what followed is pure pigeon mayhem.  Obseve:

This is what Jo and I referred to as a Frenzy.  That's right, with a capitol F.

Jo loves pigeons.

Look how cute this little kid is as he gets his ice creamy treat.

I learned that Jo loves few things more than reading newspapers in the park.  It's a luxury he rarely gets a chance to indulge at home, so he made sure to partake in some relaxation while he has the chance.

And I love few things more than fresh squeezed OJ, so I made sure to indulge as well.

This picture has some 'splaining to do.  Jo pointed this out and it cracked me up so much I had to take a picture.  The story is about a murder that took place.  Since the picture was apparently too violent for the general public, they cut out the image of the bloodied, dead body.  And then circled it in case we weren't sure what we were looking at.

The pigeons would roost up in the surrounding trees when their bellies got too full to hold anymore corn.

Here, Jo is demonstating his pigeon-whispering skills.

And his dog whispering skills.  This sweetie moseyed on over for some attention.  And, of course, Jo obliged.

We decided to make one more trip to Locot's to fill up on some good food before the bus ride.  To start, Jo got an old Bolivian classic:

For food, I got some sopa de quinoa:

And this giant potato stuffed with egg and covered in a tomato sauce.

Jo got this beef dish.

Soon after, we collected our bags and said goodbye to Sucre, this time for good.  We boarded our bus without mishap and hit the road for the seventeen hour bus ride.  We made one stop before it got dark to get some food at the little roadside stand, but Jo and I didn't get anything because we had already eaten.  Plus, the road food in Bolivian can be questionable as far as sanitation goes and there is almost never anything vegetarian to eat. 

We did find some pigs as we walked around to stretch our legs.

This is the bus we took, "normal."  As I mentioned, we had seventeen hours to go, so we bedded down as best we could and braced ourselves for the long haul.