Sucre- The Capital City?Mar 12, 2010
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| Although many of you know that we have already returned home, we have the intention of finishing the chronicle of our journey. After all, how can we tell the same story to everyone in person? After our trip to Copacabana we returned to La Paz as mentioned earlier and did a city tour and enjoyed a fancy hotel room with a bathtub. The following day we took a bus to Sucre, where we did some hiking and exploration of the city itself.It is all white in the old colonial part and quite pretty. We went to a museum of Bolivia's national history. It was in the building where they had signed their first constitution after obtaining independence from the Spanish. We could look at the various copies of the constitution as it had changed throughout the years.We saw various relics that had belonged to various participants of the revolution such as General Jose San Martin. And they also payed homage to an Argentinian woman and her husband who dedicated their very lives and sacrificed their family for independence. It was really quite interesting on the whole. It was here that we were informed that Sucre was and still is the capital of Bolivia. After all they were the main handlers of the gigantic silver trade coming from Potosi back in the good old days. Other sources told us that La Paz is the seat of government and it shares power with Sucre which is the seat of the judicial system. Who knows? We went to a small town called Tarabuco, the following weekend they were going to be celebrating a harvest festival unfortunately we could not afford to stay that long as we were running short on time. So we went to the usual market they have there on Sundays. They are renowned for their weaving there, as well as for their distinctive style of dress. We didn't buy any weaving since it wasn't really to our taste, however we took the time to get some explanations on the significance of their weavings. These particular people weave in multi colors and weave designs of everyday activities such as tending llamas, harvesting corn and so on. It was really a pleasant day. It was fun to see the women in their shorter than usual skirts because of the heat and cylindrical hats it they were single. The following day we took a 2 days and 1 night hike into a region where dinosaurs had once roamed and where remote communities still exist. The town where we stayed the night was located in what had once been a lake. You could see the sedimentation left behind where the water had once existed. We stayed overnight in a nice little hostel...a small cabin in fact, which was a lot more luxurious than we were anticipating. Apparently it had been built by some French people in conjunction with the community. We saw some prehistoric dinosaur footprints left behind in the mud during one of their migrations. Along the way we gave coca leaves to anyone passing by and lollipops to some children at a school. Did they ever go wild over them! There were so many of them that we were worried there wouldn't be enough for everyone....we had just enough. On the way back we followed an Inca trail once used by the Chaskis or messengers of their empire. They used to be able to run from Cuzco to Sucre in 5 days. Amazing! We spent one last night in Sucre and moved on to Potosi the following day. |
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