Viva Chuquisaca!

Chuquisaca is the Departamento (State) that Sucre is capital of, and my favourite word when said really fast! I have now finished 3 weeks studying in Sucre, so here´s a summary of the extracurricular activities I entertained myself with:

• Day trip to the famous Sunday markets at Tarabuco, featuring mostly textiles typical of the region and indigenous people wearing traditional dress. Next day I visited the Indigenous Art Museum in Sucre to find out what the weaving I bought means.

• 95% downhill mountain biking tour, although the 5% uphill felt like a lot more...I blamed altitude rather than my lack of fitness!
• Trying the best saltenas in town - like a Cornish pastie but filled with meat or chicken, egg, a few veggies and a spicy liquid sauce.
• 6 August was the 180th anniversary of Bolivia´s liberation, celebrated with several days/nights of street parades and Bolivian flags everywhere. Although I wanted to steal one of the cute uniformed pre-school children, I was bored after half an hour of watching marching police bands and teenage girls in short skirts and long white boots (no Rio/Notting Hill Carnival costumes here!) so decided to check out a local nightclub until 5am and therefore slept through the main Saturday morning parade.

• Tour of Cal Orcko, a sheer cliff face where dinosaur tracks have been exposed by vibrations from a cement factory that is still operating! UNESCO wants to preserve the footprints with silicone but can´t afford it yet; the government can´t stop the mining because its a private company and many people are employed there...Bolivian priorities I guess...anyway, I was a bit cynical about the closeness of the footprints for such big animals!