My month studying Spanish in Sucre went well. The classes were good, although I have a lot still to learn (there are four past tenses in Spanish!). And through the school I did lots of random things, like salsa clases and the very popular sport in Bolivia of ¨wally¨, i.e. indoor volleyball.
Sucre, which about the size of Cork, is a city with some nice plazas, parks and lots of impressive white classical buildings. But side by side with such buildings are things like big plastic dinosaur public telephones (because of the dinosaur footprints that are preserved outside the city) - a bizarre juxtaposition if ever I saw one!
My time in Sucre coincided with two things related to water. The first was that it was rainy season. But this was nothing like as dramatic as it was in Macchu Pichu. Here it generally meant really nice sunny days, then an hour of thunder, lightening and lashing rain in the evening. The second was that the city centre was constantly the scene of a huge waterfight. In the month leading up to Carnaval (i.e. the month that I was in Sucre), all the kids, and many adults too, engaged in a ¨boys v. girls¨battle. People threw water from balconies, kids with supersoakers were driven around the city for the perfect drive-by shooting, and people carried and threw water balloons everywhere. Even the shoe-shine boys, of which there are dozens, diversified into selling bags of water balloons. The other feature of the build-up to Carnaval was that there were constantly bands of musicians partying in the streets - the fact that they were an easy target for water balloons seemed to be all part of the fun.For the first two weeks in Sucre I stayed with a Bolivian family, which meant I ended up in the middle of some random situations. For instance, I celebrated the news that my brother Terry´s wife Martina had given birth to my new nephew Christopher by attending a birthday party for a 13 year old girl! For the party of the youngest daughter of the family I stayed with I was seated right in the midle of the huge extended family that attended the birthday lunch. An interesting experience!
A highlight of my time in Sucre was going paragliding for the first time. Though it was a bizarre sensation running off the edge of a mountain, the fact that it was a tamdem flight eased any worries I had. It was great fun and something I´d like to do again.
By the time I leave for Argentina next week (after attending the famous Carnaval in Oruro) I will have spent two months in Bolivia. There are loads of things, mainly good though some bad, that I will remember about Bolivia. These include:- people chewing coca leaves and the mantra ¨coca is not cocaine¨,
- the Bolivian navy training on the shores of Lake Titicaca - Bolivia lost its coastline to Chile over 100 years ago but still thinks it will regain it somehow,
- lovely, hearty soups, including ones that come with chips floating in them (unfortunately I cannot claim credit for the classic line ¨Waiter, is that a fry in my soup!¨),
- llamas,
- women wearing amazing indigenous clothing and hats while carrying huge bundles and/or babies on their backs,
- the panic when the ATM gave only 200 Boliviano (20 Euro) notes - no one in Bolivia ever has change for notes, and that often includes 20 Boliviano (2 Euro) notes!,
- showering while pretty much standing on the toilet in a country where shower curtains are a luxury and the idea of a wet room is far removed from the ones you see on Cribs, and
- the widespread availability of big, cheap, fresh fruit and vegatable juices.
But one image certainly dominates all others - that of Evo Morales. Bolivia´s first indigenous president was re-elected for another five years just before I arrived and his image is everywhere. In Bolivia, its certainly All About Evo!
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