[016] Sucre
I'm travelling in South America. Here's what I'm up to, some photos and other bits
I set out to write this blog honestly. The good parts, the bad parts. Not like darkest parts of my heart parts. But at least give an honest account of my trip.
I’ve been in Sucre for three weeks in a homestay with a Bolivian family. There’s a brass band outside my window. Quite a loud one. Quite a bad one. They’re preparing for the 215th anniversary of the city this weekend. I’ve picked up a cold and feel pretty crappy, although happier. My first two weeks were a little miserable. It’s been a bunch of things.
Living your life not knowing what’s next is freeing but scary. There are times when you need a firmer plan and times when you need to loosen your plans. I’ve been needing a firmer plan. From the start I’ve aimed for this point: language school in Sucre. But I didn’t know how long it would take. It’s taken four months. Beyond this I had nada. Probably Peru, but where and what I didn’t know. And what for?
Combine this with the start of British Summer, missing my best friends’ weddings, sprinkle a little loneliness, and here I am. Damn, even a snap election can stir some feeling of homesickness. I’ve also got a business idea moving around my head. Like the ball in that game. I’m trying to move that little platform left to right to left to keep it afloat. The business would likely be in the UK and I need to do some research for it. And when I get an idea in my head I want to get on with it, whether that’s buying a pair of trousers or figuring out something like this.
Cut to Jimmy Anderson announcing his retirement and I’m on Skyscanner. Brought the laptop to my bed, my dollar bill emblazoned bedsheet twisted uncomfortably around my legs. The wedding-cake cathedral tower looked beautiful down in the centre of Sucre. Framed by my bedroom window and the lights coming on in the city, the toy hills silhouetted behind. My head said: I could be in London for the Lord’s test in July, which is, like, the week of the Euro finals - right? Which - whisper it quietly - England might be in? And ohhhh how we remember the summer of 2018…?
But I shut the laptop lid.
Most people I’ve met out here go through this. There’s some perception that you’ll have a 100% great time but it’s not always like that. Friendships can feel transitory and you’re far from the place and people you love. It can be hard. Maybe I just need to chill out more. My Bolivian family feel this. They suggest I’m highly strung when I complain about the language school’s organisation, or that the classes are getting too big. They think I’m overly angry that the ATMs don’t work or that the shops don’t abide by their listed opening hours.
But I’m here. Staying here because of the excitement that arriving in a new place generates, slowly unpicking it and understanding it’s rhythms. Because of the luxurious free time I have to keep considering things. The natural beauty I’m still to witness. The new friends I’ll meet. And simply because the special things which alight my five senses will be destroyed in 5 billion years when the sun exhausts its hydrogen fuel core and starts to consume all of the inner planets.
In the here and now Sucre is a paradoxical place (for me). Actually, it’s a UNESCO world heritage centre. It’s dubbed the white city of Bolivia. Most people find it rather beautiful, and it is. It has the energy of a university town. Buildings all painted white, terracotta roofs, churches, a gorgeous leafy plaza. But oh my god the traffic. The pollution.
If you want to ruin a city fill it with filthy cars from the 1980’s (70’s? 60’s?). Buses too. Buses imported from China which have ingeniously positioned their exhausts at the side to spew out plumes of thick black smoke at head height onto the narrow one-and-a-half person wide pavements. I presume no vehicle has ever needed an MOT in Sucre, because if they’re passing these toxic machines - well, that’s laughable, I find that laughable.
It’s suffocating. And I’ve been in big growing-faster-than-they-can-cope cities before (Delhi, Colombo, Amman…), but never has pollution bothered me like this. Maybe it’s the tight claustrophobic streets. Or the altitude makes me feel every breath that much more.
And I get it, Bolivia probably has economic objectives which it places above air quality. But it bothers me. It bothers me that the people living here seem to have become accustomed to it. I’ll be out of here this weekend into beautiful clean air, but they’ll have to keep living with this. And I already feel like I’ve had three years knocked off my lungs’ lives in the three weeks I’ve been here.
The clean air I’m heading to is the Sajama National Park and the Uyuni Salt Flats. On a bike!
After my cycle trip in March I had 48 hours where bike was the answer. Bike was all I wanted. I’d been reminded of the beauties of this mode of travel and I was determined to do more of it. I spend a good afternoon adding bookmark after bookmark from the excellent bikepacking.com until I rediscovered a video that I previously watched in dreamlike stupor from my desk in London during one dark afternoon last winter.
The thing is, the trip’s remote. Water filling points are infrequent, navigation can be difficult (there isn’t really a road, just salt desert) and nights can drop to minus five. Thankfully, I’d met Izzy in Argentina (friend of a friend of a friend) who’s been travelling though Patagonia on her bike and actually knows what’s she’s doing with these kinds of adventures (thank you Izzy!).
I’ve kept in her ear, convincing her to join me on the trip, and last Saturday we spent a joyful afternoon in a bike shop on the edge of town constructing my trusty steed / imported-from-China-piece-of-aluminimum-crap which needs to take me 600km from Sajama to Uyuni. Who needs an afternoon exploring the sights when you can spend it with an ex-professional cyclist in his shiny-tile-floored bike shop?
As for Sucre, there’ve been good times too. We’ve had karaoke nights belting out Zombie by the Cranberries, a stark contrast to the love ballads favoured by the locals. When I look back, this is how I imagine it went down. And what I call my ‘culture mornings’: arriving at 10am in Joy Ride Café to marinate in the end of the football season. On the staff uniforms they have optimistically emblazoned ’NO SOLO PARA GRINGOS’ in big letters. Amongst the cockney geezer to my right and the group of wining Liverpool fans to my back I failed to find any evidence of this.
I came here to learn Spanish (the teaching is good and affordable) and I feel happy with what I’ve accomplished here. I’m still a far cry from fluency, but over lunch I can natter with my sweet Bolivian mother Marlene and her twin daughters Andrea and Lorena in Spanish, and that feels a world beyond when I arrived in Argentina in January.
I’m finishing the last touches to my bike setup before I head to Sajama. I’m feeling on the healthy edge of apprehension and excitement about this trip.
Catch up after the ride!
Love
(an optimistic) George
