Day 69 - Slowing down a bit

Sucre

We've booked a few days in Sucre to slow down a bit as all of the early starts and long days while we were in San Pedro and on the Uyuni trip have caught up with us.

We slept in and wandered around the city, getting our bearings which was made easy by the fabulous location of our hotel. For once we were staying as close to the centre as possible, and in a nice hotel rather than a hostel.

We wandered over to the market, it was very busy and had all sorts of things for sale - from cakes to veges to fruit juice to spices to cow snouts ... just your average Bolivian market I guess.

Sucre is known as the white city because of all the white colonial buildings, pretty much every building in the central area of the town is white. We walked up towards the mirador (lookout) at the top of the city, it was very steep and made us feel we were back at Valparaiso, but this time with the complication of being at altitude.

On the way up we visited the very interesting indigenous arts museum and textile exhibition. Normally textiles wouldn't interest either of us that much, but it was amazing to see the intricate weaving done by the indigenous peoples of the area.

The mirador bordered a plaza which was obviously a teenage hangout, but it had a lovely cafe which pretty much had only gringos in it, with deck chairs overlooking the city, so we decided to stay for a drink while we admired the view. Of course, no gringo hangout in Bolivia is complete without a visit from some local musicians playing the pan pipes, so we had some musical accompaniment as well.

We tried to visit the church of San Felipe Neri a few times as it was meant to be open but the door was always locked. We later read online that you are meant to ring the bell and they come and let you in - but how are tourists meant to know that when there isn't any info anywhere about it, including on the map given to us by our hotel?