Day 128 – 129 : Sucre

Sucre is a beautiful town filled with white washed colonial buildings, designed in Spanish style.  Totally different from Uyuni, and much much bigger than I expected. 

I really like this town, it is pretty and bustling, and really pleasant to walk along the streets.

I found it also really interesting seeing buses and cars with Japanese words written on them. 

It seems that Bolivia must be getting a huge influx of the “no longer in use” vehicles from Japan.

Lots of churches in this city too!  

As for sights, Sucre is also supposed to be known for being one of the cities where the largest amount of dinosaur fossils and footprints were found. 

In fact, there is a tour organised by the tourist information centre in the morning at 9am, which brings you a short distance away from Sucre, where one can trek a trail and touch the dinosaur footprints imprinted on the surface (There is a Parque Critacico within Sucre city, which suppose to promote the viewing of these footprints, but was told by the tourist information staff that it isn’t worth it, as the Parque has been over commercialised and viewing of these prints are from 60m away).  I would have loved to do this trek, but due to time constraint I had to skip it.

Other sights visited in Sucre included :

Mercado

Just like any other markets, one can find a wide range of fruit and vegetables, meat and poultry, snacks and of course cooked food.  It was pretty crowded when we were there, and is good fun watching the locals parade their wares and buying their daily groceries.

There are also a number of chocolate vendors here, and they are really cheap and tasty!  I think Sucre might probably be the chocolate city of Bolivia!

Plaza 25 de Mayo

This is the main square of Sucre, and houses a number of beautiful and important buildings, as well as museums. 

The main one would probably be the Government Building, which at the time of the visit was going through some upgrading and restoration. 

Nevertheless, we were able to visit the inside and the view from the roof was great! 

Recoleta

This is a highly promoted spot in Sucre, and one can get a really good view of the city from around this area.

At the centre of Recoleta is a beautiful church, with a long arched corridor around the square.

Parque Bolivar

It is a really compact park, and not much to boast about.  There is a Bolivian version of an “Eiffel Tower” in the park, which in my opinion is really pathetic. 

We thought that by climbing to the top of the Eiffel Tower we may get some spectacular views.  However when we reached the top, we found out that there wasn’t really much to see, and not even worth any camera shots!

Justice Building

Located just next to Parque Bolivar, this is a really modern and beautiful building.  I am actually quite surprised that they allowed us to just enter and visit this building as well as some of the other governmental buildings that we had visited. 

I particularly liked the stained glass image of the justice lady made for this building.

Cemetery

I think this cemetery must have been modelled after the one in Buenos Aires.  The entrance gave it a real grandeur feel, but interior was less of the huge sculptures one would find in Buenos Aires.  There were however many smaller tombstones, some without names or details of the deceased scattered around the back of the cemetery though.