Sucre...the real capital, but don't mention that in La Paz!

So after a few action filled days in La Paz (and a few chilled ones to get over Simon's little bug!) we reverted to 'flash packers' and flew to Sucre. We were very happy with our decision to fly as the bus journey would have been 20 hours on some of Bolivia's worst roads and we found out afterwards that along the route there were roadblocks! Taking off from La Paz is amusing as the airport is at 4000m, so once you are in the air the plane flies suspiciously low over the Andes all the way down to Sucre (a mere 2800m).

The nice thing about being at a lower altitude is that the sunshine is warm and not just light! Sucre is the administrative capital of Bolivia and a very pretty little town. They have a law that all buildings need to be white-washed once a year, but I think this only applies to the central buildings because as you leave town there are nothing but dirt walls. This does make for a very clean, tidy and pretty touristy part of town which we explored at leisure - to be honest, there is hardly anything to do here!

We discovered the very picturesque San Francisco Cathedral and on a recommendation went about trying to get in and have a look. You have to know to visit the Santa Teresa school next door and ask to visit the now closed church, but the faf of doing so was well worth it. Not only was the woman who showed us around on a private tour for two hours very knowledgeable and full of interesting facts about Sucre, but the views from the roof were simply stunning. No better place to see Sucre from.

The rest of our time was spent watching Euro 2008 football (I read my book while Simon was glued to the TV) eating local specialities (this included ordering a soup which was shamelessly a Knorr pack mushroom soup! - I was outraged) and finally catching our first film in 6 months... nothing up-to-date, but a film none-the-less. While staying in Sucre we discovered that Potosi, our next destination, was surrounded by miners roadblocks and the town was running out of food as no supplies had got through in 10 days! Great we thought...the only way out of Sucre was back via the route we had flown to avoid, or wait (which was what everyone seemed to do) After some very scary stories about buses going to Potosi being torched etc, we waited until the worst was over and headed off.

The journey was in fact uneventful as the miners had called off the strike 2 days before our departure (after storming the tax office and burning things!) and they were now in 10 days of negotiations. We took the 10 day window to visit Potosi and get out!!! We did however see lots of evidence of their roadblocks (burnt buses etc) along the 3 hour journey and I was glad to be there safely.