Sucre

It has been quite a while since my last blog post because I was traveling around with Brenda and without my computer. Luckily, I had my camera and thus there are copious pictures to update and stories to tell, so without further ado, here is the delayed update about my travels since September started.

On Tuesday September 2 Brenda and I woke up at 530 am to head to Trompillo airport in the middle of the city of Santa Cruz. With the airline TAM (which apparently has a pretty crappy reputation, we of course did not know about the reputation until the tickets were bought) we flew to Sucre, the capital of Bolivia. Sucre is considered the most beautiful city in Bolivia and its chocolate capital, so I was very excited about visiting. Our first stop on the grand tour of the city was the Casa de Libertad, a building where the Constitution was signed and which also served as a university. Brenda and I were able to get in as nationals thanks to her appearance and accent.
The hall where the constitution was signed. Because independence day passed relatively recently before our visit (August 6th), we saw the actual constitution and not just a copy, which is what they usually have there. When this building was a Dominican university, which used to be the best in the country, this room was where students defended their thesis’s in front of their professors and the public.
Paintings at the head of the room where the constitution was signed. In the middle is a painting of Simón Bolívar that he considered to be the most accurate representation of himself (on the left the gold leaf is a note from Bolívar congratulating the artist for doing such a good job).
After Casa de Libertad Brenda and I headed over to the Prefectura and got someone to take us to the top for a view of the city. To the left in this picture is the plaza, the tower in the front is from the Cathedral, and there are tons of other churches all over town. Sucre is known for all its white buildings.
Some graffiti that we saw all over the city. While the department of Chuquisaca has a large indigenous population that supports Evo, in the city Evo is disliked and there have actually been a lot of protests and Evo has not been able to land his airport in Sucre.
We met up with Geovanna, from CEPAD, and a girl from Spain who was placed in Sucre to do her internship in the evening and went out to dinner in a lovely restaurant. When we met up there was a parade around the plaza, so we stopped and took some photos. Here we are in front of the Cathedral and the parade is behind us, though you cannot see it well.