The One with the Long Face

After a lazy morning, we boarded another bus for the journey to Sucre. A beautiful city full of white colonial buildings, and with a main square reminiscent of Vera Cruz in Mexico, with Palm Trees and fountains.

We were in an amazing 4* hotel (will I ever be able to hostel it again?!), and even got upgraded to a room with a bath - the bath was the size of a postage stamp, but it was a bath none the less!

We had a whistle stop tour of the city - including a trip to the Dinosaur park, Cal Arko - home to the worlds largest collection of Dinosaur Footprints. The footprints are on a wall upright ar a 70 degree angle formed when the Nazca and South American Tetonic plates collided.

The footprints themselves require a bit of imagination. The Ankylosaur was wearing size nine nike trainers I think, and the titanosaur was tip toeing, - that said I know a couple of certain 4 year olds who would have loved the full sized models, and so I took lots of pictures!

From here we headed to a viewing square where you get a panoramic of the whole of Sucre, to a run down castle, home to a romantic orphan loving prince and princess, and the mini Champs De Elysses park that the prince built to stop his missus going back to France all the time.

This included a small fake Eiffel Tour, an arch which if you squint could be the Arc de Triumphe, and a tiny grubby boating circuit which under no circumstances could be described as the Seine, and yet is. I reckon the Princess didn´t like the boat ride to France.

The next day was the day of the long faces. We were going horseriding, but also were going to have to say goodbye to Fi, Yvonne and Jimmy.

My horse had an afinity with the south end of Jimmy´s horse, and kept his nose permanantly under Jimmy´s horses tail. If I slowed him down, he would speed up, and only a few quick reactions on my part, stopped my horse from having a rather dirty nose.

We moved through the city - rubbish was everywhere, and dumped in ditches where the pigs and dogs rummage through the scraps. We passed through a street where they were selling potatoes in big blue hessein sacks, the women in their trilby style hate over their long dark plaits and with large pinafore aprons, starring at us. I´m not sure if they were morre surprised to see people so white, or horses!

There were dogs everywhere, yapping at the horses, from the top of unfinished houses, or running madly backwards and forwards along the pavement, and of course there were little children running out of their houses to shout Hola!

Soon we were more in the countryside with rolling hills, farm land and the odd house. We headed along a track before dismounting and leading the horses down hill (walkign like John Wayne), to the dry river bed. We left the horses to graze, and walked up the dry river bed towards the 7 waterfalls.

Waterfall is a bit of a loose term. Small dribble, supplied by piped water would be more apt.

That said the final pool was 4m deep, and had murky green water, which in the mid day sun was very inviting, and we sat dipping out toes, and eating our lunch before going for a dip.

On the way back to town, we passed an area where the farmers were drying their corn. Yvonnes horse took a munch (with a large gasp from the farm hand) and walked slowly on like shaun the sheep munching his hay. Very amusing.

That night we went out and partied in style until 4am in a small club which played everything from 80´s, 90´s to modern bolivian music. To be fair after a couple of drinks you can dance to anything.

And then there were eight.

We miss you guys!