Yesterday morning we slept in and didn't make it to breakfast until about 9:15. The buffet breakfast here is great. The leek quiche is particularly good and we followed that up with lemon pie. Why not, we're on vacation.
Once we were completely stuffed, we walked around the main square and got orientated. We were too late to have enough time in the Casa de la Libertad, where the Bolivian Declaration of Independence was signed in 1825, so we decided to save that for another day. Almost all tourist attractions here close between 11:45 am and 2:30 pm so we'll have to time our visits.
In the end, we wandered around looking at restaurant menus and admiring the town. Sucre is a university town with about 40 separate little campuses. It seems very clean and prosperous although there are still beggars in the main square and in the surrounding streets. Throughout Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, we still see Volkswagen Beetles, which were still sold here long after they were discontinued in Canada. We also ran into a couple of "Zebras", hired by the Bolivian government to teach children about traffic safety in a friendly, playful way. It seems to be a very successful program although, even when you do everything right as a pedestrian, you still have to watch for vehicles making turns. The pedestrian definitely does not have the right of way.
In the afternoon, we just enjoyed the sunshine on our rooftop terrace. We've included a picture of our room from the terrace. After happy hour, we shared a pizza at a restaurant we had picked and were home early, as usual, after taking a couple of pictures around the square.
This morning we managed to get to breakfast a little earlier. Just by chance, we met a couple from Red Deer, Alberta who invited us to sit with them. He is a doctor and she is a nurse. They volunteer with an organization called "A Better World" which we'll have to google. They have travelled to 82 countries at this point. We had a really interesting breakfast with them. We all agreed that one lesson of travel is that few countries are poor because of a lack of resources. In every poor country, there are some extremely wealthy people along with many extremely poor people. It's a question of politics and distribution of wealth.
After breakfast, we toured the Casa de la Libertad. We learned a lot about the Bolivian struggle for independence and saw many artefacts, including a huge wooden bust of Simon Bolivar, the actual Declaration of Independence and the original hall of independence, which had been liberated from the Jesuits who built it as a church.
After the Casa de la Libertad, we walked to a big park in front of the Bolivian Supreme Court building, checked out a few more restaurants and returned to our room to re-group. We couldn't get in to our next attraction, the Museum and Monastery of Recoleta until 3 pm, so we spent some time reading on the rooftop terrace.
Sometime after 2 pm we walked uphill about 7 blocks to the plaza overlooking the city and in front of the church and monastery of Recoleta. Shortly after 3 we were admitted and were taken on an 8 person tour which was unfortunately all in Spanish. However, it was still interesting. On the tour, we saw the nationally famous "Ancient Cedar" tree which is the only example left of the trees that used to cover Sucre. It looked more like some type of Ash than a Cedar but why quibble? As the tour continued, we saw lots of religious paintings and artefacts and ended up in the so-called choir above and at the back of the church, but only the present-day Jesuit monks are allowed to sit there.
There were elaborately carved wooden seats from the 1870s here, depicting some Jesuit missionaries of this order who were crucified in Nagasaki in 1595 by the Japanese people they were trying to convert. Some of the carvings appeared to be children, not adult missionaries, so we're not sure what that's about.
Yesterday was sunny and 24C. Today was cloudy this morning but this afternoon is sunny and about 15C. Fall is here. Tonight, we ate goulash at El Germen. Tomorrow, we'll probably tour some of the cathedrals.
No comments:
Post a Comment