Potosi & Sucre

We left the chaos of La Paz on the very back row of a rickety green bus. I dont know what the others were complaining about, but I was comfortable in the middle of the row, with all the legspace I needed. I quickly fell asleep as we bounced through the outskirts of La Paz and onto the neverending altiplano, waking up only at 4:30 am, once we had reached our destination. We took a confused taxi to our hostel and, waking all the other sleepers, we settled into our uber comfortable bunks just in time for the sunrise.

Potosi was... lethargic. On a rien foutu. And we loved it. We spent the day moving from bench to bench, too tired or uninspired to see the few worthwhile sights (well, its not hard to be uninspired when the most popular attraction is the monetary museum). In the afternoon we watched a movie called ´Cocalero´ about current president Evo Morales´electoral campaign. Evo is Bolivia´s first indigenous president, campaigning for the poor, indigenous and for the coca. Thats the good part. The slightly worrying part is one of his preferred slogans: ´Muerte a los yanquis´. He also seems a bit single minded - not acknowledging the problems of cocaine in the country nor focusing much on how to improve the Bolivian economy.

Inspired by our movie - watching streak and the TV in the hostel we spent the evening watching the end of ´The Motorcycle Diaries´ and then, one of my favorite movies ´Requiem for a Dream´. We ended the night thorroughly depressed. but contently so.

The next day we took a swerving taxi to Sucre, the ´constitutional capital´ of the country. There's a terse rivalry between La Paz (where the president resides) and Sucre (where the supreme court is based) on who is the country's capital. So much so that the day we left La Paz there was a huge march through the city demanding that the govt. stay put in the city. Similarly, Sucre was full of banners and posters declaring it to be the ´Capital Plena de Bolivia´.

We took a much better liking to Sucre, the white city, even though we did nothing more than eat and bench around all day. We spent some time in the Joy Ride Café having the best coffee of the trip so far and then watching a hard-hitting documentary on child miners.