Still in Sucre!

This pretty little colonial style town high in the Bolivian hills has proved to be a very hard place to leave! We are now on day 13!!!!! Tomorrow we FINALLY leave for Potosi, famous for its silver mines and for being the highest city in the world, at 4,824 meters (15,827 feet) above sea level.
But thats tomorrow.

Till now, we have been kept in Sucre by invitaions to party with Bolivian High Society (a very interesting night, which turned out to be at the home of my Spanish teacher!) by offers to salsa, by the Carnival (we have been waterbombed everytime we step out...which was funny for about 5 mins...but got funnier when Mandi retaliated with eggs, to great effect!) and we have also been stuck here because of the freak rains that have hit Bolivia, which have been so severe that much of the country has been made homeless, pretty sad situation.

So to escape the rain, and get over the slight sensitive tummies that we both had from adjusting to the altitude, we took refuge in one of the most well known and popular ´gringo bars´, called The Joyride, run and owned by a Dutch guy called Gert. We found ourselves defaulting to Joyride so many times, that the staff all know us by name and the Gert ended up taking us under his wing and showing us the real Sucre...hence the Bolivian´High Society´party. Turns out Mandi and I have found ourselves in Sucre at the énd of an era´for the owner of the Joyride, as this week he handed over ownership of the bar to its new owner, and that meant another big party! So, we found ourselves extending our stay here yet again, and before I knew it I spent 4 days helping Gert create a leaving film for his ´do´, editing film on a god awful PC with a crappy Windows application...painful! But, was great to get creative and help make the movie for the final, big, epic leaving do, attended again, but some of the ´biggest names´in Sucre.
Even better, we checked out of the crappy hostel we were in and moved into Gerts´spare room, and have enjoyed hanging out with his flatmate Linda and her beautiful baby Esme, so cool to be around kids again.
The final big party came and went with a bang, we were the only guest ´travellers´there, it turned out to be a pretty exclusive affair, so I am so glad I packed a glam dress. Needless to say, we had alot of fun, or in Mandi´s words, we were ´fighting them off with a shitstick´!!..Bolivian men are just a little bit too much....but they are brilliant dancers...!

Sucre has turned out to be pretty special, the guide book warned us that people stay here longer than planned, but we didnt expect to fall into that cliche! Thanks to the friends we made, we were able to see beyond just the travellers´spaces, and get to understand how the town feels for the people that really live here.

So tonight, the final party...at the home of our host, and tomorrow, off to Potosi!

By the way, my camera got knicked, very gutted (for me like losing a limb!)
but we have Mandi´s camera, so will upload shots soon.

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