Day 28

 Monday 29^th November 2010

We had a lie in – 9am – woo hoo! We met up with JJ and Stephanie for a tour of Sucre. Sucre is also known as the white city as the majority of buildings were traditionally painted white to reflect the sun. It has now been made law that all the houses built within an 8km radius of the centre have to be painted white. However, there is also a loop hole in Bolivian law that you don’t pay tax on your house until it is finished so many of them aren’t white and still look half built despite the fact that people are living in them!

Sucre is much less hectic than La Paz and has quite a European feel to it. It’s also more affluent. While La Paz is the financial capital of Bolivia Sucre is the judicial capital. The courts are here and if you do anything wrong in the whole of Bolivia this is where you must come to be tried.

We walked through a variety of plazas with monuments celebrating various battles of independence throughout the years, usually beating the Spanish.

We arrived at the Parque Bolivar. This is kept beautifully. It was created by a rich Bolivian guy for his wife in 1915. They were unable to have children and she fell into a deep depression. Previously she had loved to travel to Europe so her husband built the park with ‘canals’ to remind her of Venice and then commissioned a mini Eiffel Tower from Gus Eiffel (who built the actual one in Paris). So today we climbed the Eiffel Tower – not something I thought I’d be doing in Bolivia!!!

We bumped into Teresa and Iris who had supposedly been horse riding. Unfortunately at the start of the trip one of the horses had freaked and they had all been thrown off. One girl got trampled and the tour was cancelled – glad we didn’t opt for the equine activities here! They joined us and JJ took us to a little local ‘café’ for the best chorizo butties ever – and only £1 each!!!!

We spent the rest of the afternoon in Joy Ride’s bar supping Sangria (I told you this place was European didn’t I?!) and we caught the Super Classico. Real Madrid got a schooling!

The evening was free evening and JJ had left a list of restaurant options at hotel reception. We opted for El Huerto as the description he gave was ‘Good steaks and good service’. What it should have said was…… ‘ if you can find it!!!’ We asked at reception and they assured us that due to the one way systems and manic traffic it would take 20 mins in a taxi but only 10 mins to walk so we set off with the map. All was going well until we plunged off the beaten track in Sucre’s ‘suburbia’. The streets got darker, not a tourist in sight… and then we reached shops that would only serve you through bars! Feeling pretty conspicuous and not particularly safe we gave it up as a lost cause and headed back to Joy Rides restaurant.

It was now 9.30pm and we were STARVING. They had a Tacos dish on the menu that was recommended for 4 or 5 people to share. 20 tortillas, beef, cheese, guacamole, salsa, sweet chilli, corn and 4 bottles of Corona for 180 Bolivians (less than £18) so we ordered it for the two of us much to the amusement of all the waiters.

We didn’t finish it but we had a damn good go! Afterwards we rolled back to the hotel for an episode of The Inbetweeners before bed!