Beautiful Sucre

Sucre is a beautiful city, with a lovely central plaza where you can see couples relaxing, families with their children and friends sitting on the many benches in conversation. In the core of the city are white colonial buildings set against the blue sky. It's stunning! The gardens within the many plazas are well kept and in the very central plaza there is a monument with four lion statues, a good meeting place. Compared to other cities in Bolivia, it's really well maintained. The days are warm and at night walking around with a sweater is comfortable.

We were in Sucre for about three weeks, studying Spanish at Sucre Spanish School and staying with a Bolivian family. The classes have really helped us to understand what people are saying and to begin speaking very simple sentences, mostly in the present tense. Our plan was to only spend a week in Sucre but it is beautiful, warm and so relaxed! Like many other travelers, we decided that we were going to stay longer, until the celebration of the Lady of Guadalupe ended on September 14. I really loved it in Sucre and would have stayed even longer had we not already made plans in Bariloche, Argentina.

Our home-stay was in a beautiful matriarchal home of four sisters. It is a house full of women (13 women, only 2 men and 1 baby boy)! Only one of the sisters has two sons, the rest all have daughters. We felt completely at home and relaxed in their house! The section we stayed in belongs to Judith. She, her mother, her daughter Camila and dog, Patricio, live here. Patricio is a super-high energy Cocker Spaniel. I loved having a dog around the house and it made me homesick for my dog, Manen! Ramanan and I both decided that we really like staying with families and would do more home-stays in the future. Staying with them gave us a glimpse into their lives and their culture. When we left Bolivia, a month had gone by and in some ways the time went quickly but in other ways, it went slowly. When we left Sucre, we were glad to have met this family and that they were a part of our lives for that brief time. I think it is the people that make a place special and they made Sucre special for us. Their property is very old and they have added homes as their family grew. It is truly my father-in-laws dream in the real, to have everyone so close to each other!

Their housekeeper's name is Eli and she is a fantastic chef! If I was home in the morning, I would probably have followed Eli around and watched her cook, but that's when we have class. Included in our home-stay, was breakfast and lunch which was spectacular. Lunch in Sucre is a three course meal, always a delicious soup, followed by an entree and a fruit or light desert. Most of the city has a two hour break at lunch and will go home to eat before returning to work. Most days after lunch, I was stuffed, thoroughly satisfied and trying to fight off the afternoon sleepiness. There have been a few days where I caved in and the afternoon nap lasted a few hours. Coming home for a two hour lunch break is special to Sucre because it is a small city of only 250, 000 people. In contrast, dinner is a small meal, often tea and bread and butter as is the case at Judith's house.

Bolivian food is simple and delicious. They have many savoury dishes which are not spicy to the Tamil palette. If you want heat, there is aji, a blend of pureed tomatoes and chilli that you can add to your plate like a condiment. Here are two important observations I have made about South American food so far. Even more than rice, they love their potatoes!! We had potatoes in every meal, often in both the soup and entree. The street food you buy (usually at night) like hamburgers or sandwiches will come with freshly made papa fritas, or boiled potatoes. Actually everything comes with papa fritas! The other thing that South Americans love is their fried chicken! At night, the smell of lard and fried chicken lingers on every street corner. There are a like a million restaurants serving fried chicken and no one seems to tire of it. We met a French-Canadian who permanently settled in Sucre and within seconds of the start of the conversation the topic of fried chicken came up. He told us that he doesn't quite understand it either but fried chicken is what you have for dinner here, every day!!