Travel to Sucre (May 21, 2006)

Even though the bus companies in Uyuni advertise buses to Sucre, we had to take a bus from Sucre to Potosi, and then change buses to catch one from Potosi to Sucre. There weren’t any direct buses from Uyuni to Sucre. The ride from Uyuni to Potosi was supposed to take six hours, leaving at 10am and arriving at 4pm. We read in our guide book that the buses from Potosi to Sucre leave at 5pm, so we figured we’d have enough time to buy a bus ticket when we arrived in Potosi. However, we seemed to be on the super-slow bus (all the other buses passed us and zoomed on ahead), and it ended up taking us seven hours to get to Potosi. We shouldn’t complain about the driver going slow though, given the sheer dropoffs over the the cliffs as we went around the switchbacks over the mountains. We arrived in Potosi at 5pm and figured we had missed the bus to Sucre, given that we had to transfer to a different bus terminal as well. There are also shared taxis that you can hire to drive you to Sucre, so we thought we would look into those. We took a taxi to the other bus terminal, and found out the shared taxis to Sucre cost around 35-40 bolivianos per person. We then noticed that there were still a couple of people yelling out “Sucre!” for the buses, so we went over to the lady and discovered that the bus to Sucre hadn’t left yet, and we could get tickets for 15 bs. Each. Sweet! The bus takes 1 hour longer than the taxis, but we didn’t care. The bus was pretty nice, with comfy seats. Still no sign of the terrible Bolivian buses that other travellers had warned us about.

We arrived in Sucre at 9pm, at what didn’t appear to be the bus station (we were just dropped off in the middle of a street, with no other buses around!). Everybody else got off the bus though, and the guy told us it was the last stop. We gathered our bags and didn’t have a problem waving down a taxi to take us to the Hotel Cruz de Popayan (they seem to be changing their name to Sucre Backpackers Hostel), a place I had found on the Internet that looked nice. We were glad we knew in advance where we wanted to stay, since we were arriving after dark. At the hostel we got the last room, and unfortunately no “cama matrimonial”. It seems they are rare in Bolivia? The room was nice and big though, with high ceilings, a big wardrobe, and good firm beds. The hostel is located in an old Spanish colonial building, which means the rooms are all located around a central courtyard with flowers, trees, and benches. It was quite lovely once we saw it in the daylight.

We were very hungry, so after checking in at the hostel we left in search of somewhere to eat. We found a place a couple of blocks away and unfortunately made the guy stay open a bit late in order to serve us. The Bolivians keep much more civil hours than the Argentines, and the restaurants close at 10 or 11pm. Back at the hostel we went to bed at midnight, the latest we have stayed up since we left BA! Man, we’re getting old!