Our second day (or first complete day) in Sucre – most of the group joined the half day organized city tour; John, David and myself decided to do a city tour on our own. Our plan was to catch the Dino Truck at 09:30 – but we missed it by one minute, so we changed plan to take the truck at noon and have a stroll around town before. Quickly we we discovered the fact that all opening times listed in my Lonely Planet were wrong, consequently most churches were just closed (so we had to come back in the afternoon).
We made it up a hill to enjoy the view over Sucre. after which we went to the Museo Textil-Etnografico, the local textile museum. We were told before that one may need at least an hour to discover this museum – however due to our constraint with the dino truck leaving at 12:00 we only had about 25 minutes. For me this worked out perfectly, I did not find the museum too interesting (in the end weaving in Bolivia is not different from weaving in Mexico). We also met the rest of the group in the museum, they got the full tour with guide (thank god, I did not go on the tour…).
After some quick walking we made it to the main square and to the dino truck just in time for the 12:30 departure. The story here is quiet interesting; a main industry around Sucre is the cement industry, for this – of course – stone material is needed, which is taken from a nearby quarry. During work dino tracks have been discovered in this quarry. Any western government would have quickly closed down cement operations, in order to protect and further study the dino tracks – however as we are in Bolivia cement works are going on, only a certain portion of the wall is protected; Bolivia is now hoping to get the Sucre dino tracks a Unesco world heritage to ensure proper funding. The tour we did was rather interesting; we got a funny introduction to the dinosaurs whose tracks we were about to see (using plastic dino toys for illustration purposes) and then did a walk around the quarry.
In the afternoon the group met again to check and book the activities for tomorrow; options included hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding or combinations. While my decision has not been the best (check tomorrow’s blog entry) – at least I did a good choice in terms of food; the peppersteak sandwich has been this delicious that I directly ordered another one :-). After we where through with booking David and myself (without John this time) decided to visit the churches that had been closed in the morning.
