Sucre

We all woke up with slightly sore heads after a few bottles of wine and beers the night before which when combined with the altitude (we were still at 3600m), I think we got away lightly. We made it down to breakfast which was a table for two with plenty of cereal, yogurt and coffee, the usual spread. This was then followed by bread and scrambled egg with chopped frankfurters that were freshly made for us. No sooner had we finished one lot of bread the next lot came out, this was then followed by the biggest plate of fresh fruit. We decided to make a break for it shortly after the fruit arrived, scared that even more food would be brought to us.

We managed to make it out the door with Jordan and Nick to the place where we were to get on the bus. Notice I didn't say bus station, as the Uyuni 'station' is simply a street / street corner where busses may stop out side the agency for you to get on. The bus wasn't quite like the ones we've been getting around other parts of South America but for just a short day journey it would do the trick. The bus would take first take us to Potosi where we would need to get on another bus for Sucre.

Potosi is a mining town and most people that go there go to to do a tour of the mines. We decided not to stay to do the mine tours for two reasons, the first is that we heard that some mines still had children working in then which was something we were not keen to see and secondly, we all know what happened when the mine collapsed in Chile and trapped 33 miners. We didn't want to be part of the next mining headline!

When we arrived in Potosi we all ran for the bathroom. After trying to rehydrate from the night before and then being on a bus that had no toilet and didn't stop for 4 hours, we were all close to a disaster! We jumped back on the bus which took us to another station down the road where we had to swap to our Sucre bus. After 20 minutes, we were off again and arrived in Sucre around two and a half hours later. Again, the Sucre station didn't have much to offer so we flagged what sort of looked like a taxi, showed the driver where we needed to go and hoped for the best. We if eventually arrive at our hostel which is HUGE and contains a travel agency, bar, restaurant, party area and countless numbers of rooms.

We had originally planned to stay in Uyuni for 2 nights but after getting there we realised that there was a reason most people left as quickly as they arrived so didn't actually have a room booked in Sucre for that evening. Fortunately they had one spare however they said that it wasn't the best room and we could change rooms the following evening if we wanted to. By not the best room, he meant that the bed was suspended 10ft up in the air and to get into it you had to climb up a wooden ladder, like the ones you used to get at school as part of the gymnasium equipment. There were no barriers on either side of the bed so if we rolled over to far we would have easily fallen out! Needless to say, we told him that we definitely wanted to swap rooms the following day!

We were tired and hungry from the bus journey so walked to the next building over which was a burger joint. Think super high end Maccers with a choice of around 10 different burgers ordered in 4, 6 or 8oz with chips and a drink. For both of us it came to a grand total of around £9. Much cheaper than we have been used to paying in other parts of South America so maybe now we're in Bolivia we can start saving some pennies.Read more