We arrived in Sucre (2,800 meters, quite a decline in altitude from Potosi) and while I watched our bags in the plaza, Colin found a really fun hotel for us to stay in! It was called the ‘Grand Hotel,’ and its location was fantastic just off the main plaza. Colin even negotiated a good discount with them and we ended up staying nearly two weeks because we enjoyed Sucre so much!
Since it was nearly Sunday I signed up to join a tour that would visit the Tarabuco Market, a colorful market of Bolivian goods run by the indigenous Yampara people. Colin wanted me to bring back some strange local fruit for him to try! It took a couple of hours to get to the town of Tarabuco and once I arrived I headed straight for the fruit and vegetable market for a breakfast of chicken, chips, and salad. For 10 Bolivianos – that is $1.50 USD! The rest of the market was really fun to explore. I found loads of different, colorful potatoes for sale. An entire horse chopped up and ready for purchase. Later I walked through the meat market and saw llamas and other animals’ meat ready for sale as well.
One of the most interesting things I saw was the shaman elements for sale as offerings to please Pachamama. Llama fetuses (common because llamas cannot carry twins and miscarry) are used in the ritual, along with confetti, objects from the sea, and colorful candies imprinted with images pertaining to the ‘wish’ being asked for from Pachamama.
I walked around for a while more and managed to pick up some strange fruit for Colin and a funny, huge fluffy llama hat for myself for just $20 USD! Pretty good deal for something that would cost at least twice that back in the States. An awesome look for me. 
Unfortunately, neither of us liked the weird fruit once we tried it… it was not sweet enough. The first fruit, called pacay, was a very hard, green fruit which was like a giant bean pod. We had to cut the thing open with a knife. The inside looked like a fuzzy white banana cut into chunks, with each chunk containing large black seeds. The seeds were quite annoying when we tried to eat this fruit, and the strange fuzz texture of the fruit not too appealing. One of the other fruits we tried was a cactus fruit known as ‘tuna’ or a prickly pear. There were way too many seeds in this fruit as well and the watery fruit-flesh was just not good enough to be worth the effort.
The next morning we decided to visit a remarkable site called Cal Orck’o located at Park Cretaceous. The area is a massive limestone wall discovered by a concrete company which contains 5055 dinosaur tracks from 8 different species of dinosaur. One set of prints measures 581 meters long, the longest set of prints discovered. Throughout the park there were fossils of marine creatures and plants in the stones used to build the walkways. The most fun parts about the park are the life-size dinosaurs all over the place which I posed next to so we could compare the massiveness of the dinosaurs (like the 36 meter long Titanosaurus) with how little I looked!
Our guide led us into a museum which contained models of dinosaur footprint types so we could see how dissimilar the three-toed and massive elephant-like prints looked. Part of the limestone wall fell down a few years ago and the museum had photos of the wall from before this time. Below you can see the wall before its collapse (photo) and after (in our photo from when we visited) the giant triangle-shaped piece fell.
The highlight of the visit was putting on some hardhats and following our guide down to the face of the wall to see the dinosaur prints up close. It was such a difference to be able to get really near the prints to truly understand the scale of how big these creatures were. I used our camera’s “dramatic mode” so we could get clearer images of the prints.
Colin and I paid a visit to the Casa de la Libertad, a former Jesuit University (the only University in the 17th century that used to give a law degree) which is now a museum on the main square. It now houses the former senators’ chamber, guns from the independence fighters, and portraits and belongings of the 81 different presidents Bolivia has gone through. It was here that we learned that Sucre’s first name was “La Plata.” One of the key pieces we saw was Bolivia's Declaration of Independence, which was written by Simon Bolivar and approved and signed by Congress in the building.
Next was MUSEF, also known as the folklore museum. There wasn’t much in this place except a fantastic collection of colorful festival masks (many of them depicting animals or demons) on display from all over Bolivia. Following this was a museum at the medical university on anatomy. There were no pictures allowed, and for a pretty good reason. While most of the displays were models of body parts, there were about a dozen real former fetuses kept in clean plastic boxes on a table. A few of them had died from medical problems, others had been stillborn. It was really eerie.
While Colin went back to the hotel, I continued on to a costume museum which had period pieces on display and peaked into a musical instrument school for children.
The final place I explored that day was the anthropological museum. I started off by getting an explanation of cranial deformations of the Chuquisaca people (made up of numerous groups including the ‘Sauces,’ the ‘Mojocoya,’ the ‘Yura’ and other peoples) along with models of what the peoples’ heads would have looked like with flesh on them. The display continued by showing the pottery, stone tools, and petroglyphs likely made by the same people.
On my way back to the hotel I picked up a surprise crepe for Colin with dulce de leche and one for myself with chocolate and strawberry. Delicious.
The morning of May 14th I went to check out a few different churches and their museums containing gold and silver items from Sucre’s boom period, including the Cathedral containing a jewel encrusted Virgin de Guadalupe. The Church of San Felipe Neri was the most interesting, so I’ll show some of the unique, gleaming white architecture here below. I also visited the European-style house of Dr. Gutierrez Valenzuela who collected beautiful items during his trips to Europe. He had one room done totally in gold and mirrors!
The next morning Colin and I discovered that there was going to be a fashion show in the main plaza. I made a mental note to get some tickets! Recoleta was next on the agenda, with an old convent and church and a massive old tree. But none of that was nearly as interesting as the fashion show, so lets skip ahead to that!
Around 8:00 PM that evening we took our front row seats I had booked us and got settled with some snacks. We got a program which told us that there would be more than a dozen different collections coming down the runway that evening – all of them by Central and South American designers, and many by Bolivians from Sucre, Tarija, Oruro, Potosi, La Paz, and Santa Cruz. Some of the designs were really basic – like, hardly anything or pretty tacky neon lycra. Clearly no effort put into them whatsoever. Then a few of the other collections (such as Oruro’s Monica Siles) really blew us away, resembling something we might see in an upscale professional stage show with each new outfit having its own creative theme. We took a few videos of some of the collections!
On May 16th, Colin and I relaxed – we had another big night planned! Following a delicious sushi dinner, we caught a taxi to a Bolivian dance show called Origenes Bolivianos. Once we arrived at the theater we were seated front and center with a perfect view of the stage. I had decent expectations for the show, but what followed on stage really blew me away. Amazingly choreographed and energetically danced… this show is awesome. The line up for our show was the following dances:
The pujillay or ‘mother earth tribute’ danced by the people of Tarabuco when they defeated the Spanish troops during the independence war.
The diablada or devil dance is performed during carnival in Oruro because the devil is worshipped inside the mines and must be honored.
The cueca boliviana is a dance of courtship done by distinguished cholas.
The takipayanaku is a mix of dances from all the different regions.
The taquirari is the traditional festival dance of the Amazonian people, done with straw hats.
The tobas is the ceremonial Andean war dance the Incans danced after being defeated by the eastern Bolivian Tobas people (temporarily defeated as we learned in Tarija.)
The tinku, the dancing/fighting celebration which clears the air of any communal grievances.
The estampa chaquena is a foot stomping flirtatious dance by farmers.
The saya afroboliviana contains African elements and is from the Bolivian yungas.
The caporales is a dance of female sensuality and male masculinity.
The carnival paceno is a dance from La Paz which mocks various figures including the Spanish bullfighter in the Waca Wacas dance.
My favorite was definitely the Incan dance – it had fantastic costumes and loads of energy. The music had this beat that was just addictive. I’ve included a short video of the dance below so you can see!
May 20th was Colin’s birthday! I had a few surprises for him lined up, but I’ll let him tell you about those. Before his birthday I did get him a slice of Oreo cheesecake and I picked up some other (not so tasty) Bolivian snacks to try called masaco. It sounds like a really good mix, cheese and plantains, but the result is quite heavy and a bit foul to taste.
Here is Colin now to write about his birthday:
My birthday started off with a lovely big breakfast on the plaza, including some caramel pancakes! Delicious. The weather was always lovely in Sucre, the altitude and location perfect for warm sunshine, all year round. After this we wandered around until we came back to the hotel where Francesca showed me an awesome story she had written for my birthday about our adventures in the Chaco – the densely forested area in the middle of the continent full of animals, un-contacted tribes and unrivalled adventure! The story was a choose-your-own ending roleplaying adventure starring both of us, and it was immense fun (although my first go, I was eaten by a caiman!).
After this, we went for a relaxing spa bath massage. This was extremely relaxing and we both enjoyed it – and at under $10US we should have gone many times! We thoroughly enjoyed a dinner in the evening, and the whole day was very relaxing, which was exactly what I wanted. Thanks baby!
On May 21st I decided I had one last museum and a factory I wanted to visit in Sucre. This museum was all about different weaving techniques and their cultural significance – with a bit about festivals, music, and dance thrown in as well. There was a very detailed English language book they gave me to take around which was very informative, and explained how fabric and weaving styles were not just decorative but evidence of a person’s class and specific cultural group. You could tell where a person was from just by looking at their clothing colors and patterns. You could tell how experienced the woman was and the wealth of the person wearing the clothing through the intricacy of the weaving.
My favorite observation was the difference between the men and women’s weaving with the delicateness of the patterns in the women’s work and the large patterns in the men’s work. The women’s weavings typically had patterns which recalled festivals or farm work or social scenes and the weavings had “highlights” in beautiful colors. The men’s weavings had bright colors as well but more ‘block’ style and the patterns were of bizarre animals or mythological creatures.
One of the last rooms in the museum contained photos of a cave known as ‘Escara’ which is near Potosi. My booklet described how the items in the room, such as Tiwanaku period textiles and pottery, were found in the cave along with a couple of bodies who were injured and had died. The bodies appeared to be nobility because of the value of the items found with them. The best item was this massive, thick llama coat which just looked fantastically warm and fluffy.
After this museum I attempted to pay a visit to the Sucre Hat Factory. I caught a taxi and the driver was promptly pulled over by the police and written up for having not paid some traffic tickets. He didn’t know where the factory was, but we got there eventually with plenty of time. I was told to wait a minute for my tour and was sent upstairs into the shop to join a bunch of foreign visitors who had just finished their tour. Once they had completed their purchases I was told that the tours for the day were finished. What – what did they have me wait around for? I made plans to come back the following morning and got another taxi back to the hotel. This taxi broke down on the way, overheating and pouring out loads of smoke making another passenger and I jump out of the car onto the sidewalk. Eventually I got back to the hotel!
The next morning I returned to the Sucre Hat Factory and was given the tour. It started with seeing the machines used to clean the raw, loose, fluffy wool before the wool was dried out in a massive spinning drier. The wool was then gathered together and put into a machine which rolled and pressed it into a long, thin slab shape. All the workers in the factory were quick and methodic, like living robots. Throughout the factory tour my throat burned quite a bit from all the chemicals they must have been using. They should hand out some safety masks or something…
The next area of the factory was where the pressed wool was shaped into the actual hats. Well they looked like hats – though they all had the same ‘gnome hat’ shape. The hats started out big and fluffy again, but were eventually put into pressers which flattened them out. The new flattened hats were dyed various colors. I passed a man dyeing the hats black before they were sent along to another worker to be shaped using heat and hand labor.
Finally having seen the hat factory I returned to the hotel in time to catch our flight out east. Now on to Santa Cruz!
Francesca
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