No Hablo Espanol

No Hablo Espanol
Sucre, Bolivia

Sucre, Bolivia

After a crazy week of riots and condor seeking in Arequipa we hopped on a plane and headed to Bolivia. For almost the same price as the bus we had one flight to La Paz where we had to hop off the plane run through the airport to get stamped though immigration and then we rushed through the airport and got back on the same plane to Sucre. Much easier than days of buses and we had the bonus of seeing La Paz from the air which was quite a sight to behold.

We arrived in Sucre and were instantly relieved to see the sun shining and the tiny airport strangely had a dinosaur greeting us.

Our hostel was perfect, it was run by a Swiss French couple who gave us a ton of maps and information and enlightened us on the welcoming dinosaur…. Apparently Sucre has a dinosaur park with real life dinosaur footprints, yeah right I will believe that when I see it.

We were booked to stay in Sucre for a week as we had planned ahead to go to Spanish school here. This is one of the cheapest places to learn Spanish in South America and thankfully the Bolivians speak very slowly and clearly so there was some chance of us actually getting to practice and learn something.

We set off for a walk to see where our school was and were absolutely overwhelmed by the sheer number of people and cars in Sucre. We had been led to believe that it was a sleepy little town like Arequipa (not that that turned out to be too sleepy during our stay) but it was like walking through a tsunami of people as it turned out that we had timed our walk just perfectly to coincide with the schools closing for the day and seemingly everyone walking in the opposite direction to us. We found our school but after the delay in fighting through the crowds it was already closed so we decided to just show up the following morning for our lesson.

So it turns out that despite having a booking for a lesson, that means nothing in Bolivia and we were greeted in the office by a woman who just shouted at us in fast, loud and unclear Spanish. Seriously you would think that they might give their staff some free lessons! We were not alone and in the hour that we waited around for the secretary there were 4 other people all waiting for lessons that were clearly not going to happen. We probably should have about turned around and found another school but we stuck with it and eventually had a booking for a private class for the 2 of us at just $3.50 each per hour, bargain. The best part about Spanish school was that they sent us off with a shopping list to buy a notebook and pen, I don’t need telling twice that I have a perfect excuse to buy stationary. We found a great little shop and were set with new notebooks, shiny new biros and even a set of highlighters for good measure.

We had signed up for 3 hours each morning and it was pretty brutal, we started with the basics and it seemed like days before we actually learned anything useful. Really we probably needed a month here to get to any useful level but our attention span was waning after a week so we were just going to have to stick with our now slightly improved Spanglish to get us around. Our days after Spanish lessons were spent relaxing in the main town square watching the world go by, eating cheap cake and amazing sandwiches for the most bargain food prices we had discovered anywhere so far.

What we didn’t realise was that we were in Sucre for their Independence Day (25 May)which meant day after day of marching bands around the city. This was all well and good until we faced a procession of about 30 different school marching bands coming down the hill that we needed to walk up to get to school. Needless to say we opted to just relax and enjoy the mix of terrible squawking instruments and the ones actually being played with some talent and turned up at school fashionably late.

Whilst Sucre is at altitude, it is low compared to most places we had been at 2,800 meters which meant that it was warm when the sun was out but the design of the buildings including our hostel and school were old colonial Spanish buildings so they had lovely courtyards surrounded by various rooms but none of the rooms that we were using ever seemed to even see the light of day and we were constantly freezing which in conjunction with over exertion at Spanish school left Tim with man flu. Oh no, this was going to be a rough ride.

Just as Tim hated school through his youth, he hated it as an adult and very nearly quit as the man flu and 3 intense hours a day were just too much. But he stuck with it and just spent the last few days of Spanish school sniffing and snotting his way through. As a reward on our last day we had a huge steak sandwich for lunch and a pot noodle in bed for dinner, I sure know how to treat him like a king.

With Spanish school done and our language skills now significantly better than when we started we had time for some exploring. When I say significantly better I mean we knew what we should be saying and understood the correct verb tense and conjugation, however our minds were so full of what we should be saying in practice I think we got less into our sentences than when we started as we spent so long thinking about what to say the person we were speaking to generally worked it out and we didn’t need any words, hmmph, that was one weeks Spanish school well spent, not!

We decided to explore Sucre and despite having to battle through the crowds of people and marching bands from the independence day celebrations which were now into their 7^th day we headed to the local park where horse rides, fussball, colouring in on tiny chairs and a miniature Eiffel Tower were all drawing the crowds. This little park was reminiscent of the wild and crazy peoples park in Chengdu in China only on a tiny tiny scale. We had received a recommendation to visit the cemetery in Sucre. When we asked at our hostel they said not many people went as it is so much smaller than the famous Buenos Aires Cemetery but undeterred we paid a visit and we are so glad that we did. This cemetery is absolutely stunning, so small and quaint, but beautiful, peaceful and picturesque. The graves are basically small windows within a wall, 5 high and and long as the wall, the coffin is in the wall behind the window and the windows are each decorated in memory of the lost loved one. This place had both Tim and I in tears as it was so sad seeing a little glimpse of peoples lives and there seemed to be an overwhelming number of windows full of toys and teddies dedicated to children and toddlers. Due to the celebrations in the town the cemetery was pretty empty save for a few people up ladders tending to their little shrines. Feeling slightly emotionally drained we headed home, or so we thought…. After a 30 minute walk downhill in the wrong direction we about turned and began the climb back to the centre, where we celebrated finding our way home with coffee and cake.

With just one more day to fill we couldn’t resist a trip to see these supposed dinosaur footprints. We were a little apprehensive as this outing took us to a working quarry outside of the city. We arrived at Cretaceous Park and were welcomed by some huge fibreglass dinosaurs which were actually surprisingly well made. Our expectations were low so the bright and well-made entrance was a welcome surprise. We had planned ahead and knew that you could only go down to the footprints with a guide at 12 or 1pm and we managed to arrive at 11:30 in perfect time so we were bundled into a dark room and a DVD of Walking with Dinosaurs was put on to keep us entertained whilst we waited. The build-up was pretty extravagant so our expectations were heightening, although we did keep reminding ourselves that we were in a quarry in Bolivia. The guide took us around the park and showed us various bones, fossils and giant plastic dinosaurs before finally giving us our hard hats and leading us down to the main attraction. From the top of the stairs we could see the amazing Cal Orcko Wall, OMG what a sight.

This 1
.2km high wall was uncovered during excavations in the quarry and was absolutely full of dinosaur foot prints, over 5000 to be exact, the reason that it is a wall is that it was once the floor but when the Andes Mountain range emerged the ground was pushed up to make the floor a wall. The prints are estimated to be 68million years old and were only discovered in the 90’s when excavations in the quarry stopped as the ground being excavated was no good for concrete production and when left gravity, rain and earthquakes shook off the remaining sedimentary rock exposing the prints.

We headed down the rugged, uneven cliff path to get face to face with the wall and wondered what use our hard hat was going to be if we took a wrong step here??!! We made it safely to the bottom and headed over to the wall where up close you could see the foot prints in perfect detail, from tiny little lizardy shaped prints to huge round ones the size of your head. For the conspiracy theorists out there who think that some funny Bolivian has carved these 5000 prints out for a laugh, I can say that is definitely not the case as they can’t even be ***** with building stairs down to them so I think that chances are low.

This site is in the process of applying for UNESCO world heritage status which will provide the much needed funds to protect and conserve the prints. In 2010 a section of the wall collapsed and astoundingly there were even more prints beneath the first layer, but this could well have been the end of the wall. It is anticipated that if the money isn’t raised to protect and conserve the sight it will have fully eroded by 2020. I so hope that this doesn’t happen as this is a really special place where every adult feels like a kid standing on ground where undisputedly dinosaurs once walked, awesome, magical and amazing.

Muchas Gracias Sucre, onwards we go to La Paz.