Day 91: Sucre, Bolivia

People are pack animals. Being in groups provides feelings of safety and security for most people. Unfortunately for us, we don`t really like groups of people. It always creates problems like confusion, power struggles, and frustration. Already we had acquired 4 other travelers and during our one bathroom break from the bus last night, we met and picked up two more travelers also destined for Sucre.

This morning, we left the bus station to find lodging for the night and, in a such a large group, there was bound to be some amount of disagreement. And especially when most people carry a Lonely Planet “bible” instead of actually looking at the world around them. Lin had 3-4 addresses for some decent hostels near the center of town and suggested we head there to begin our search. Since no one else was making any suggestions or objections, we hopped a couple taxis and met up again in the center with little hassle. We are so used to finding everything on our own that we just set out as we usually do without a second thought. The others in our group were uneasy about not knowing for sure where we were going or being able to find the hostels we were looking for “in the book” but came along, however hesitantly.

We checked a couple of places that were all a little to expensive for our tastes when one of our travel mates flared up rather angrily and stated “None of these places are in the book, we should go here!”, pointing at the top spot on the hostel list in his guidebook. Fair enough, we have no objections so we trucked down the street headed for “La Tourista”.

Our room in Sucre

The place was unbeatable cheap ($2.50/night!) but was the most disgusting horrid place we have ever stayed and one of the top 5 worst bathrooms of all time. He was quite happy to have found a place but the rest of the party was not  impressed, there was a bit of commotion as to who wanted to stay and who wanted to go back to the last place (very posh hotel for only about $7 per-person). We were tired of it all so we booked a room, unloaded our stuff and went to find some food. Half our group stayed the other half returned to the other place.

Happy to be free for a moment we trudged off around town looking for some tasty food and found a fantastic little, cheap cafe on the square. After a nice meal we wondered up to the mirador to get a look at the city from above. Oddly enough as we are walking up the hill we run into the Kiwi couple from the Pantanal ranch.

Saben on the way to the Mirador

The city from above

We closed out the night at an alcohol release party at a local bar, you can never turn down free drinks!