After the 12 hr bus trip I arrived around 5 am and rang the door bell at the hostel, a couple of minutes later a very sleepy girl in her pyjamas opened the door and gave me keys to a room.
I later found out that her bedroom is a room under the stairs, although some what larger than Harry Potter´s room ;)
So I stumbled in to bed only to discover an hour or so later that this room faced east and the to windows had no curtains :( Any way after a late breakfast I went off to book my air ticket to La Paz - air travel is relatively cheap in Bolivia; expensive if compared to a long distance bus, some of which have very comfortable fully reclining seats. The trip to La Paz is 12hrs by bus and a little over an hour by plane for $89
I arranged to move into the room next door on my return which didn´t have east facing windows. I booked a tour to the Tarabuco markets about 64km from Sucre for the Sunday as on Sundays they have a very large market and they all wear the local very colourful dress traditional dress.
The next morning I came out to breakfast to find that Peter and Kathryn and the 2 French girls from the Salar trip had checked in overnight.
It was nice to see them. I told them about the markets and they booked on the same tour so we were together again :)
One of the things on sale at the market in many places was Coca leaf, The Coca leaf is used for many things on of which is helping to deal with the effects of the high altitude.
They remove the stem of the leaf and then gently crush it with their teeth and push it into their cheek, until they have a mass, after a period of time some of the coca is absorbed through the blood vessels in the cheek which has an anesthetic effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca
Also on sale at the markets were really red hot peppers - our guide told us that after some time chewing coca they need something to overcome the numb tongue and this is the stuff to do it !
Also on the trip we met a young American Zoologist Shenaye who was in Sucre learning Spanish at a school and living with a Spanish family as a homestay connected with the school. She had done her practical for her degree on a wildlife research reserve the wilds of Namibia doing research on baboons. She had become a vegetarian and given up her parents christian faith while living with little contact with the outside world.
We invited her to come to the only chinese restaurant in town ..which was a hard ask for Bolivia but it was ok and we had an enjoyable dinner.
Sucre is called the white city because most of the older buildings & churches/monasteries are painted white, a few of them are very old built in the 16th century. One was a monastry/seminary opened in 1568 and only closed in 1970.
I spent a interesting hour looking around St Phillip Neri once a monastry now a Catholic high school run by the nuns.
Sucre is really worth a place on any itinerary
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