Day 6: Sucre, Christmas!

We woke up on Christmas day to find ourselves in a hilly, shrubby area with little houses dotting the roadside.  We were getting close to Sucre, our first destination outside of La Paz.  We ended up getting there fairly early (7ish) and after comparing a few hostels, decided to splurge on one of the nicer ones, Hostel San Fransisco.  We ended up paying (get ready, now) about $9 apiece!  Shameful, I know.  But it was Christmas, after all, so we decided to treat ourselves.  And it was really pretty.

We were both hungry, and since nothing seemed to be opened yet, we grabbed some cheese and crackers and headed up to the roof to have some breakfast.

Don't ask.  Just don't.

We formulated our plan while we munched on the goods.  Since we weren't sure what would be open, we figured we'd just walk around and check out the town.  Sucre was a town that was known for its many museums and charming atmosphere.  To be honest, our first impression wasn't so good.  We both found it to be dirty and lackluster.  (We would later come to find out this was largely due to the fact that it was a holiday, and that we were being a little too rough on poor ol' Sucre.)

A mini tour of Sucre for your viewing pleasure:

There was a fruit market right across the street from the hostel.  We didn't want to get too loaded up too soon, so we vowed to come back.

It was mid morning by this time and the town was certainly waking up.

A random street shot of the city.

Jo was a sweetheart and offered to carry my purse for me.  I've not seen a man look so good carrying a murse since I saw Indiana Jones.

Jo took this.  Leave it to him to find a poster for Bolivian metal.

We stopped in at the gaming/Internet cafe for about an hour. Internet service turned out to be fairly accessible and cheap, costing anywhere from 2-7Bs per hour, depending on where you were.

We decided to walk to the bus station to get tickets to our next destination, Potossi.  We weren't really thrilled with Sucre and decided to keep moving.



I was instantly drawn to these alien baby dolls we found in a store window.  Then again, who wouldn't be?



We eventually wound our way to the City Plaza.  Like most Bolivian city plazas, it added a nice touch of green to the city.  We decided to hang out for awhile, seeing as we had nothing better to do.  That's what's so great about traveling; you have the time to do nothing but sit around on a bench and watch the birds.  At home, there is a constant pressure to be productive.  Between school and work and other obligations, "nothing time" is seen as wasteful instead of beneficial.

The plaza at Sucre.

I'm not sure if they had homes or were street dogs (probably a combination of both,) but there were an awful lot of dogs hanging around.

A view of a clock tower from the plaza.

Taking the time to sit down and not do much of anything was amazing.  People watching was awesome, and their were plenty of pigeons to entertain us as well.

This sweetie woke up from a nap and decided to come over to visit.

After a nice long scratching session, it plopped down at our feet.  It's always nice to make new friends.

And pretty soon, what do you know?  Another pup came over to say hi.

We flagged down this juicer so we could get some fresh squeezed OJ.  Super cheap (3 Bs) and oh-so delicious.

This balloon seller was a festive touch.  There were a ton of kids in th plaza (more on that later,) so I'm sure he had some good business that day.

Hell, even I wanted a balloon.  But, whine as I might, Jo said no.

I wasn't kidding when I said there were a lot of kids in the plaza.  At first Jo and I assumed it was because it was Christmas and families were spending time together at the plaza.  But when a large herd of excited youngsters started running through the plaza, we realized that something was up. 

Apparently, it was a Sucre tradition to throw free toys to children from the back of a pickup on Christmas day.  Once we realized what was going on we couldn't help but laugh at the mass of kiddos trying to get their hands on the goods.  They were all so excited.  We had also seen massive lines of people standing outside of certain doorways.  Apparently, it was also a Christmas tradition to give out free bread to people on Christmas.  Bolivians came from miles around for that free bread.  It was humbling to think that so many people would flock to get something as simple as bread.  I felt very lucky.

Across the street from the plaza was the Governor's Palace.  Jo went inside to see if we could check it out.  Even though it wasn't open because of the holiday, Jo talked the two security guards into letting us inside.  It's so handy having a native speaker around when you're traveling around Bolivia, I tell ya'.

One of the guards led us to a flight of stairs that took us to a rooftop, then we were on our own.  We had the whole place to ourselves, so of course we took the opportunity to practice our ballet.

After working on our pirouettes, we braved a freaky, swirly set of stairs to get to this view:

And then we went a little picture crazy:

After getting our fill of the views, we braved the freaky swirly stairs again and made our way back.

There was a second, lower rooftop that we stopped to check out.  More of the same, just not as high.

The rooftop party we had just had turned out to be the highlite of our self-guided tour.  The rooms of the mansion were closed and locked, so we couldn't go in.  We could, however, fool around in the massive hallways.

 

After the Palace of the Governors, we headed back to our hostel.  We had planned to grab some fruit at the little street market on the way back, but it had closed down while we were jumping around on rooftops.  Oh well...

For dinner that night we found one of the few places that was opened to grab a bite to eat.  Cafe Amsterdam turned out to be decent.  Jo had a traditional Bolivian chicken dish, and I had tacos.