Sucre: sugar, spice and everything nice

If we thought Uyuni was high, we were not prepared for Potosí, the hightest city in the world. 

That's why we skipped it.

On the road, skipping Potosí because of reasons.

After careful consideration,  we decided that we didn't need to do all the places on the so-called gringo trail, and we went straight to Sucre instead, "The white city of America".

We had been reading plenty about Potosí, and apparently the only thing that was sort of worth doing there was a tour of the mines, and we were not that interested in doing it. 

So we decided that, since we were going through it,  we could technically tick "the highest city in the world" off the list.

How happy we were with our decision when we passed Potosí! As every mining town I've seen, it had a feel of general sadness about it. 

We saw only a few remarkable things: a bus that carried a living goat on top, along with many other goods in humongous burlap bags; a lady that was allowing her little girl to happily LICK A POWER CABLE; and numerous people yelling the names of cities/towns where the buses were going to, in an endless litany.

The bus with the goat (goat is sadly not visible)

...

The bus that took us to Sucre was full. As in so full there were people standing up for hours.

It smelled like earth, spring onions and the occasional mandarin, when people felt like snacking. It was actually not too bad.

There was no toilet, but whenever someone felt the call of nature, they would just let the driver know, and the bus would stop for them to go on the side of the road.

Only within that bus ride, we saw 5 ladies get off the bus, squat,  pull up their skirts a little bit and relieve themselves without any shame... I just couldn't help thinking they probably all go commando.
...

We arrived in Sucre at night and saw the outskirts, which made us doubt if we were actually entering "the most charming city in Bolivia".

Countless amounts of garbage were piled in literally every corner, surrounded the river, and just laid in piles where feral dogs competed for the juicy bits of it.

But then, we made it to the city centre... and there it was: the white city, the charming, beautiful, whitewashed, adorable Sucre.

Little colonial streets at night.

We just spent 2 days in Sucre, but it was enough for me to fall deeply in love with it.

By law, the buildings in the city have to be whitewashed
once a year. Here, the photo evidence of that fact.

More whiteness.

And even more.

Old church.

More pretty white buildings.

After a one-night hostel failure (bed bugs, need I say more?), we got a well lit, comfortable room that we used as a base to explore around: the markets, the funny little buses, the lovely buildings... and THE FOOD.

Sucre is home of my favorite cake place ever, where we indulged on strawberry cheesecake, and a triple chocolate and pear ridiculousness that makes me cry tears of happiness everytime I remember it.

The most beautiful and delicious cheese cake EVER.

Happy me and our two cakes.

Sucre is also home of The Condor café, a non-profit vegetarian restaurant which was rated 1 on Tripadvisor for many good reasons.

We had dinner at Condor café, and for 25 Bolivianos (around 6 Aussie dollars) each, we had a 3 course meal, plus natural juice and dessert.

Note: when they say the spicy sauce is spicy, what they mean is IT IS SPICY, which you might not really believe after a few weeks in Bolivia.

Very nice meal and VERY SPICY SAUCE.

The streets are also full of cute surprises and even cuter people.

On our second night we were going back to the hostel after dinner. The streets were pretty dark and deserted.

 After Buenos Aires, Valparaiso (Chile's own "stab city"), and other beautiful cities that become rough death traps at night, we were pretty aware of our surroundings and maybe a bit paranoid.

 Suddenly, this guy buying food from a street vendor started talking to us in english (!), instantly recognized me as Argentinian after only saying "qué tal" (!!), and said to Chey that Argentinians are the most beautiful women in the world and that he was a very lucky guy, which made me blush and made us both feel silly for being so paranoid.

The city is actually very chilled, and people treated us in the loveliest of ways, regardless of the insane amount of tourists they get to treat all the time.

They even have this guys dressed like zebras that help people cross the road.

Zebra crossing

Looks like an awesome job.

 All in all, we had the loveliest time in Sucre (which means "sugar" in French, which makes a lot of sense).

And (only a bit reluctantly) we left for La Paz on the third afternoon, after feasting on tiramisú.



...
Random note: Since I am South American, I am aware of the factors that make so many of our cities have beautiful and rich looking "historical centres" and insanely poor outskirts very close by, but I'll talk about it later.

Chile puts the "hiking" in hitchhiking

Through this trip we had good days and bad days. And then, there was that day we left Temuco.

First it took us forever to get to the road out of town.

Then, when we finally made it, we stood there, thumbs out, confident and smiling at the passing-by cars by a bunch of nice yellow flower bushes and a load of side-of-the-road-rubbish.

Nothing.

A blurry picture of the flowers. You'll have to imagine the rubbish,

So we decided to make a sign saying "North", because maybe some cars were getting out of town and taking the higway (9 kilometres further) going south. It was our first time with a sign, and we though it was lovely. I held it out while Chey had his thumb out.

It even had a smiley face.

Nothing.

So we made one extra sign, that Chey held, saying "Por favor" (please).

Nothing.

And there were many cars.

After that, puzzled, we started thinking we were going to have to walk some. So we did. And then some more. And then some more.

The backpacks were heavy, the sky was grey, and the drivers were absolutely oblivious of the poor us on the side of the road. It was pretty miserable.

Except for this cute little fella on the ground. He was pretty cool.

At some point we stopped on a little roundabout where a random toothless seemingly homeless man started mumbling things to us while he frantically searched his pockets (I couldn't help thinking he was going to pull out a knife or a gun, but now I think he was probably just scratching).

So we put on the backpacks again and kept going, after deciding that the reason of our bad luck was the lack of trucks, the big friends of hitchhikers. 

Logically, when we made it to the highway there would be trucks, which would mean success!

But... we still had at least 7 km to go. So we walked more, for so long it seemed like ages.

 It was probably not that bad and I'm probably dramaqueening, but the backpack was cutting into my shoulders and I won't say that I had to stop and cry my frustration out, but it might have happened.

When we got to the (oh, glorious!) highway, where other two groups where hitching (luckily in the opposite direction), Chey found a very handsome hat.

Chey's very handsome hat.

And not too long after, we got a lift to the next big-ish town, Talca. Of course, it was a truck.

Yay!

The driver was quite silent, which was nice, and the drive was uneventful. 

We got to Talca and had dinner at the most ugly karaoke/fast food place, where we ordered fries, fanta and salad. The salad was actually pretty nice. 

We went to bed in our random hotel, exhausted and looking forward to the following day when we would finally make it to Santiago and real coffee.

We were in Rio Mayo before it was cool

 After Chey got some groceries (instant pasta, palitos Pep*, some bread and eggs), we waited quite a while for the camping lady to arrive. When she finally did, she showed us the "camping ground", which ended up being a wasteland of rocks, horse crap and garbage, with no shelter from the wind.  *Palitos Pep is the official snack of this team.

We discussed it and decided that since it was still light we would explore in search for greener pastures.

Chey poses next to the Ruta 40 sign in downtown Rio Mayo

And so we found the only hotel in town, a jewel called Aka-ta (the name meaning is a baby-talk way of saying "acá está" or "here it is"). The owners of the hotel, an old couple and their old dog, had bitter faces and unnecesary formal ways. While the mand showed us our room I couldn't stop humming Hotel California to myself.

Hotel Aka-ta, resort and spa (not)

So we dropped our bags and promptly went for a walk around town... where we found the reason for the bitter facces of the Aka-ta people: the whole town had been recently raided by zombies.

First sign of the zombies: abandoned destroyed houses,

Don't wait any longer, dog. Your human is not coming back. He's a zombie now.

More zombie-destroyed buildings.

The park. There are not kids playing anymore, because ZOMBIES.

Before leaving, the zombies made a monument to BRAAAAINSSS

Me, posing next to the BRAAAINS monument.

A little creepy house.

This bar was not attacked because the powers of El Gauchito are that great.

We had a blast looking at all the post-zombie-apocalypse sights, building theories about the destroyed things, and thanking life for our good luck of not living there.

Romantic sunset

After sunset we went back to our room (which we discovered had a beautiful brick wall view) and, since we're filthy hippies that don't want to waste extra money when they have perfectly decent camping food, I cooked our camping meal on our gas cooker in the middle of the room (note to parents: don't worry, I kept it perfectly fire-safe).

Cooking our dinner and wearing my sexy Muppet fur socks.

We put our twin beds together and got a very welcome night of sleep.

Next morning after breakfast we braved the most insane windstorm I've ever witnessed to walk out of town. It was such a strong wind that it made us sway even with the extra weight of the backpacks, and I had to bend almost in half to be able to keep going.

Trees bent by the wind.

And I should remember to tell you it was a dirt road, so we kept getting sand into our eyes, ears and nose. I even cried a little. I was feeling so miserable that I didn't even call Chey to look at an awesome desert lizard that walked by me (which I instantly regretted).

But we finally got to the freshly paved main road, where the wind was still insane but at least we didn't get sand punches. And of course we got a lift from the second or third vehicle that drove by.

Made it to the main road! (there was still some wind, as you might see)

Because you had to be heartless to leave us standing with that wind on the side of the road.

Outside Rio Mayo.