Sucre: Day 1

The bus journey from Potosi to Sucre was an astonishing experience! The favellas of Potosi literally cling to the hillsides, and driving through them was an experience of grinding poverty and grim determination. Whilst the socially deprived of Brazil seem to have a smile and a lust for life (as well as a way of doing everything to loud music), here the Bolivian equivalent seems to reflect the horror and pointlessness of poverty and destitution. Few smiles, and even fewer laughs. But then suddenly a beautiful old women, clad in traditional Andean costume gets on the bus, and looking helpless and lost, asks Simon to show her to her seat. “Gracias!” A tiny boy runs up and down the aisle singing “Si, si, si, la vida en Potosi,” clapping furiously. We tip him the princely sum of one Boliviano.
As we descend towards Sucre, the valleys become greener and lusher: very inviting, in fact, and around every sharp bend in the road, another breathtaking Andes view greets us. We travel through countless villages, many strewn with litter, rubbish and stones, many buildings being unfinished, with the exposed, thin brick-work looking very sorry for itself. Again, many walls and buildings seem to be of mud rather than the smart white-washed walls we were expecting, and the roofing material nowadays seems to be more corrugated iron than terracotta tiling. This country is in a mess, and its people at grass-roots level are severely poorly served. But what can be done?
We travelled slowly through the sprawling shanty towns surrounding Sucre. What a shock, but then this IS part of the Latin America we came to visit. But it seems harsher somehow than the equivalent settlements in Asia; why, we’ll just have to wait and see. And we certainly didn’t expect to see this kind of urban nightmare tagged onto one of the continent’s most elegant and noble cities. So to cleanse ourselves, we set out in the old centre of whitewashed buildings to explore some historical sites: the Cathedral and seat of the Archbishop (the senior church of all Bolivia), with its Cappilla of the Virgin of Guadalupe, encrusted with precious stones, and the church of San Francisco with its massive golden reredos. We were then amazed at the variety of fruit and vegetables available at the Mercado Central. So much so that we bought lots to cook Bolivian style! We ate a juicy, ripe chirimoya (custard apple) and then rustled up a chilli and mango dish with local sausage and spiced quinoa. Yum!