We headed to Sucre on a bit of a whim as we had read on the Lonely Planet website that it was a good place to learn spanish. Sucre is actually the judicial capital of Bolivia although La Paz is the governmental capital. The city is also set at a mere 2,800m which appealed to us having struggled to walk for more than 10 minutes without being completely out of breath for two weeks now. We also heard that the weather was better there, so we were all for it. We went by bus, for a change, along with several locals who wanted to sit on Mik's lap and a parrot.
We found a lovely hostal where lots of Germans were staying. Unfortunately they weren't the friendliest bunch, and boy did they get their towels out to make sure they secured the only table on the patio - day in, day out. Every time we went out or came back there they were. Not entirely sure what they got out of being on one of Bolivia's most beautiful cities but hey ho, each to their own. Still, I managed to shock a few by speaking a bit of German. Or maybe it was just that my german was shocking, it has been a while.
We knew we had to get stuck in quick before our enthusiasm wore off so we booked our lessons 
and met our teacher Lenny at 9am the following morning. We originally planned to have lessons seperately but were advised to do them together and it worked out very well. I think it could have been very intense having one on one lessons and we were knackered enough by the end of our 4 hour slots. In fact most afternoons we had to give our brains a bit of a rest and have a siesta! Hard life. Hence not much was added to the website! We always had homework so that was how we spent a week, going back to school. We really enjoyed it and learnt a lot but it was hard work. I found it especially hard as often german words would come to mind instead of the spanish so I didn't make sense at all. Lenny was a great teacher, and she not only taught us as much of the lingo as she could in such a short time, but also about her country. One morning we were discussing machismo and how in Bolivia the men still do nothing to help out at home, even if they are not currently working. Mik mentioned that he loved cooking and although he doesn't exactly pick up the hoover very often he's not adverse to a bit of tidying. I think Lenny wanted to keep him!
We bumped into an irish couple who we had first met two months earlier in Puerto Madryn, Argentina watching the whales. We are all travelling the same route so we have now bumped into them a few times. It was good to catch up with them and we all went to watch a south american movie in an attempt to improve our spanish. It was about smuggling cocaine into America from Colombia, so no dialogue needed really! So that's an irish couple, an english couple, watching a columbian film in spanish, in a dutch run bar in Bolivia, oooh we're so cosmopolitan!!
It was lovely being in Sucre, not just because my mountain of summer clothes got an airing again, but also because the people of Sucre were some of the friendliest we'd met in Bolivia. The city itself is one of the most beautiful in Bolivia due to it's well maintained white buildings, plazas and cobbled streets. We spent a couple of afternoons wandering around the local market. Once even trying a local fruit juice made with unripe mangos. It was delicious, until I realised it had been made with local tap water. I spent the rest of the afternoon expecting to need to make a dash for the nearest toilets. But I was fine luckily not!!
On our last day of lessons we joined all the other foreign students, mostly from Norway, for a typical Bolivian lunch and some spanish practice. 
Now it's all very well making a fool of yourself enclosed in a room with only your teacher and boyfriend but quite another to try and converse with strangers who are also just learning the lingo! So I was left trying to describe myself to a young norweigan lass and trying to understand a bit about her the only bit I remember now is that she was 23 oh and that she has a cat! We found out a bit more about averyone once we switched to english! They were all there for 3 months as part of their studies - not bad.
Typical Bolivia food wasn't all that. Pork (expensive in Bolivia) in a spicy sauce with potaoes and maize (imagine oversize sweetcorn nibblets) but, a) there was more bone than meat and, b) the sauce wasn't spicy, not even to me, oh and c) mashed maize is not nice, tastes like cardboard! So that meal won't be appearing in our top 5 meals list. OK so it's actaully a list of 500, and that's just since we've been away!
Later that day we headed off on our first overnight bus in Bolivia to reach the capital La Paz. After the luxury buses in Argentina we were holding our breath. It was actually very comfy, although we did pay for the best seats. It's funny actually how your perception of costs change as you enter different countries. I won't say we thought nothing of paying 20 quid a time for a bus in Argentina as when you are doing a couple in a week it adds up, but we had expected it to be much cheaper in Bolivia. So when the guy asked us for 11 quid each for the executive seats we nearly said no and went for the cheap seats. Then we took stock of the situation, realised it wasn't a lot of money and remembered that we are not the size of Bolivians. It was 11 quid well spent, no chickens on our bus!
Cara
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