101218: So when does a holiday actually begin? Whaley to Sucre
So when does a holiday actually begin? Is it the moment that you put on the out of office and head out to the car park? Is it when you both get home, crack open a bottle of champagne and open up those Christmas pressies that you won't be taking with you? Or is it when you finally have locked up the house having spent all day Saturday writing last minute cards, picking up presents, over stuffing suitcases and hoping you haven't forgot anything?
Then there's the dog, cats and hens to be dropped off as well as lightning visits to family and friends? Is it when you say the final goodbye before heading off - just the two of us now - to a hotel in Slough, just off the M4 in the pouring rain?
Usually there is the first overpriced airport hotel meal where you are slightly disinhibited by the holiday vibe and order a second bottle of wine - "Well, we are on holiday" - only to realise when the bill comes that you could have spent that money better on a weekend in Barcelona. None of that for us this time. The hotel was rammed and the pasta buffet didn't look that appetising. The neighbouring trattoria was closed so a quick Google later and we're in slightly dodgy pizza takeaway place, struggling with the complexities of the buy one, get one free deal and watching a local mum collect her Friday night special in a puffer jacket and her PJs.
Check-in at Heathrow was smooth and we're soon in the Airport Lounge, overlooking the planes and heading off to WH Smith's for the Buy One, Get one half price book offers (John Grisham and Gary Barlow, if anyone is interested.) Cold pizza gets chomped.
In the big scheme of things, the flight to Madrid is a hop. There's turbulence on the way as we head across to mainland Europe, then finally descend into the arid countryside around Madrid. So is this the holiday?
We booked our three flights to Sucre separately so each time it is decant, collect bags, check back in and then clear security again. Plus in Madrid the journey by transit from and back to T4S. Checking in to Bolivian Airlines, we were told we could use the First Class Lounge but we had to have a special stamp on our boarding pases Was that because we looked like a pair of scruffs? The Sala Velasquez Lounge was hidden between the big Toblerone Bars, Duty Free and perfectly coiffured perfume counter staff, who didn't even bother us with their free samples. "Big mistake" as Julia Roberts says in Pretty Woman - but Joan had got a big bottle of Chanel No5 and Chanel make-up the night before from Kevin. Is this routine of being forced to walk through Duty Free actually the holiday or merely the prolegomena? (Joan is proud that she once found a short cut in the Eastwood IKEA which meant that she didn't have to trudge all around the store - result! Is there a secret path that by-passes Duty Free?)
The First Class airport lounge was cathedral like in its proportions with a help yourself buffet and bar. We went easy. Long haul and copious amounts of alcohol aren't easy partners. But another couple were knocking back the shots on the bar like Wild West cowboys. They were getting into the holiday spirit.
So what's all this about First Class? Long haul to South America is about 12 hours and as we have got older (OK, we admit it) the thought of sitting crunched up in a narrow seat for hours on end has become less attractive. Especially when the person in the aisle seat seems to be the only person ever who can sleep continuously for the whole flight so you feel guilty waking him to have a comfort break.
When Joan was looking for flights back in February, she found some ridiculously cheap First Class flights on Bolivian Airways and snapped them up. Boliviana de Aviacion is a state run carrier and we have joked that First Class meant that you actually got a seat and didn't have to travel with the alpacas and llamas in cattle class. Actually we weren't far wrong. First class meant you got a spacious but rather aged semi-reclining seat - mostlikely occupied by Hollywood starts in the 1950s and now on their last legs. That was it. No USB charger, no flat beds, no TV screens, no audio - no nothing, nada! No other perks but nut cutlet and quinoa for evening dinner and fried tofu with spinach for breakfast (which incidentally they woke you up for in the middle of the night and then put the lights back out for another two hours or so.)
Santa Cruz was humid and just cracking day. Ironically, we won't see anything of this semi-tropical city as we reconfigured our holiday to fit in an Amazon cruise and squeezed this city out.
| Sunrise in Santa Cruz |
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| Sucre airport |
So it was a short hop up to Sucre on a small plane - maybe an hour.
Sucre airport is a single strip runway at 2,910 metres. Stepping from the plane, the air was immediately cool and thin. The short walk across the concrete to the airport building was like walking through mud. All around hills, brown and scrubby. This is beginning to feel like we are on holiday! A young taxi driver, clearly with a death wish, hurtled us through the windy mountain roads to Sucre which was about 20 kilometres away. Unusually we found the place where we are saying easily and when we rang the bell, someone was there to greet us. It was 9am and check-in wasn't till 2 pm. We had asked in advance if we could store our bags and they had said yes. However, pleasantly our flat was ready. The accommodation is on a hillside - everything is on a hillside here - and overlooking the city.
After a shower and a snooze, we went in search of provisions (we are self-catering) to a small supermercado about four quadras (blocks) away. The basics were bought - bread, cheese, apples, wine, lager beer and lots of bottled water. The climb back up the hill seemed longer than the way down. We were breathless.
As it cooled around three we were brave and caught a micro (minibus) in to town. Except we couldn't work out where the town centre was. The micro stops on demand and people seemed to hop on and off for ridiculously short distances.
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| Micro |
After about half an hour, we decided to get off as the streets were packed. It was heaving. There were no street names, our tourist map was useless and we haven't yet got a Bolivian SIM so we can use Google maps. The streets were crammed with small stalls and people selling from the pavement- bread, fruit, cheese. It was hard to find a place to stand still and look lost. A kind street stall holder asked us where we were looking for. Joan said the Plaza 25 de Mayo and the Mercado Central. She said this wasn't that market but the one for the campesinos who bring in their goods from the countryside beyond. We found two policemen who said we were way out in the suburbs and told us to get a micro back to the centre. On the bus, the friendly chollitos asked where we wanted to go and told us when to disembark.
Finally we worked out where we were and made our way up to the city' main square with its benches and imposing colonial (as it Cristobal Colon - Christopher Columbus) architecture.
One of the many reasons Joan wanted to come to Bolivia was because of the Naughty Boy ft, Sam Smith song Lalala. It features a Wizard of Oz-esque narrative featuring the journey of a little Bolivian boy with an unlikely set of friends across the vast landscapes of the altiplano. One of his companions is a crazy traffic warden dressed in a traditional Aymaran costume directing the traffic. And here on every corner of the Plaza de Mayo were crazy traffic wardens, waving their arms around, waving at the traffic and patting children on the head. However this time dressed as zebras in Father Christmas hats. Surreal!
Vegetarian food here in the constitutional capital seems easy to source so we went to the Café Condor, a social enterprise. It's always interesting seeing the variations of veggie food around the world. Joan had a stuffed potato, battered and with a queso fresco filling. Kevin had a tucumana or saltena, a local pastry stuffed with vegetables. We also tasted our first Bolivian red wine!
A lot of the women in Sucre wear traditional dress - and they are often called chollitos. They have big broad rimmed hats, a jumper, with an apron over it, flaring knee length skirts, stockings and flat, plain shoes. Their long, black hair is worn in plaits. Often their wares (and babies) are in a brightly woven slings across their backs. One came into the cafe and was selling touristy tack at the tables. Joan immediately fell for it and bought two mini llamas - about 80 pence each!
After dinner, we headed to the Mercado central and bought fruit. The aroma was amazing - sweet and sticky. You can't capture that in a blog.
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| Mercado central |
Heading home, we knew we had to catch micro number 14. We waited on the street but none came. We saw another street with buses and eventually a 14 came. We paid our three Bolivianos fare and settled in. We soon realised it was going in the wrong direction but figured we would just have to hang in there and do the whole circuit back to Estados Unidos where we are staying. No, at the furthest point from our flat, the driver turfed us out saying he was clocking off for the night. Stood in a semi-lit street, the other side of town, we wondered how we would ever get back. The micros which jammed the streets during the day miraculously vanished into thin air! Finally we flagged down an official taxi, who drove us home, tailgating the cars in front, aggressively pipping his horn and reading his mobile phone. After turning down some dark and narrow streets we were glad to get our bearings and realise we were near home. Getting lost, public transport disaster? Yup, definitely on holiday now.
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