Sucre

On Friday night we (Eva, myself, the med students, Jinny, and some guys she knows) took a night bus to Sucre. The drive wasn't too comfortable, but it was amazing. I assume we were in the Andes, and usually there were huge drops on either side of the narrow road. Seriously, it was like awesome helicopter shots in movies. If the bus veered, at most times we would roll down a hundred feet and explode on a ledge, and then our remains would fall another thousand feet. It was exhilarating and strangely comfortable to lay between sleep and waking, jostled by the bus, and scan any of the treacherous landscape that was illuminated by the moon or the headlights of the bus up ahead. We met two supposedly British girls who knew Jinny and others, who we found a hostel with and had breakfast with. I wasn't sure if one of them was actually British or if she was just faking an accent to sound cool since she wouldn't see us again. The battery of the camera I brought was dead, and I felt kind of liberated the entire trip because I wasn't thinking of what to take a picture of or what would look good. I was reminded of the photo-taking, moment-capturing mindset by something CS Lewis wrote, in That Hideous Strength, though he wasn't writing about photography at all: "And in between the stations things flitted past, so isolated from their context that each seemed to promise some unearthly happiness if one could but have descended from the train at that very moment to seize it..." Later we decided to go see the famous, now infamous, dinosaur tracks. We were annoyed and coerced by some taxi drivers who wait at the dinosaur-route bus stop and prey on tourists, and we gave in. They dropped us off at a construction site and directed us toward the fence which clearly said not to enter. It was a prime time for us to be killed and dumped in a hole at the construction site. But the cenozoic attraction was actually on the other side of the site, and this was the only entrance. Some things here just don't make sense, but Bolivians seem to instinctively know them. The tracks were on the face of a cliff a quarter mile away from the viewing platform. I don't think the park did, but they really could've faked it. That night we were the only table in a nice restaurant that overlooked Sucre, and they looped an awesome Beatles album for most of the two hours we were there. And my singing was ridiculed, just like everywhere else. Then we went to an old church, Catholic I think, which had really ugly, scary figurines all over the walls. Hostal Libertad was really nice; basically a hotel. The next day we took a bus to a small, more traditional town near Sucre. I think all the people there just dress up traditionally when tourists come, and a lot of streets were lined with hundreds of shops all selling the same wares. There was a huge, colorful statue in the center square of a screaming, bloodthirsty Quechuan (I guess) holding a bloody heart, standing over I think a Spanish soldier's body, which had a gaping hole in its chest. It was intense. We explored one dusty road of the town when we broke through the line of shoppers, and at one point had to move out of the way of a stampede of sheep, followed by a dog, and then a few seconds later, a shrieking girl, probably five years old. On the night bus from Sucre back to Cochabamba, the bus driver was on something, and we careened over edges and blew past other cars on the road. Also, Andy wasn't feeling great and kept laying on me, and the bus picked up a bunch of people, including a band and instruments, who there weren't seats for. Overall, it was an enjoyable trip.