After three weeks on the Altiplano we were ready for a break from the constant cold. Sucre, at 2750m, was just the thing with it's sunshine, white-washed buildings and a bountiful supply of gringos ensuring restaurants that serve a safe salad (every now and then you need a taste of home). A colonial style town, Sucre is centred on a plaza surrounded by
impressive
government buidings with a grid of narrow
cobblestone roads radiating outwards. Situated closely to the plaza
(inevitably named after some important date in the history of
independance) you find the numerous catholic churches and domiciles of
the rich whose austere facades, with their heavy studded wooden doors,
conceal peaceful courtyards within. Our hostel was one of these and it's courtyard was our base for breakfast, reading, catching up on the diary and homework. Yes, homework. We had decided to do three days of spanish lessons to kill some time till market day in Tarabuco. So our mornings were filled with spanish verbs in past tense while our afternoons were left free to wander the historic streets of Sucre, visit some of it's domed churches and drink fresh juices at it's lively markets.
Sunday arrived and we took a local bus to the popular Tarabuco market two hours to the east. The lingua franca on the bus and at the market was quechua and many of the older people didn't speak spanish so we had a few entertaining conversations with (and without) the help of some younger
translators who
had spanish in school. Tarabuco market is one
of the few places where people still come to trade their
goods: an
incredible variety of potatoes, maize and tomatoes from their
fields
aswell as meat, wool and other products from their animals. Added to
the perishables were colourful arrays of powder dyes, handwoven
textiles,alpaca jumpers (or chompas) and other souvenirs for tourists,
sandals made from old tyres, second hand 'ropa americana', the typical
many-layered skirts in all colours and patterns and much much more.The most fascinating part of the market were the men and women in their traditional Yampara dress: Black, red and orange striped ponchos for the men with sequin and feather decorated cowhide conquistador helmets. The
women wore simple
black dresses with intricately designed
hand-woven cloth pinned round their waist and shoulders. The woman also
wore a headress: a sturdy thick woven 'fez' with a curled extension set
at a cocky angle on their heads with beadwork fringes framing faces
whose smiles glinted with star shaped gold fillings. The yampara dress
was so drastically different to the common 'polleras' (or flounced
skirts) that you usually see in the towns that it made me curious as to
the origin of the bowler hat and bell-shaped skirt. The answer lies far
away in the Iberian peninsula. During spanish rule, especially after
the indigenous uprisings, an attempt was made to quench every source of
national identity by outlawing traditional dress and imposing the
peasant dress of Old Spain. How ironic and sad that what everyone now
automatically associates with Andean South America is despotic and
cruel in origin.After the market, and a quick look at the impressive but distant dinosaur footprints, it was time to head back to Patacamaya to our lonely motorbikes. An overnight bus - cama for comfort- dropped us off at 5am on a misty and freezing cold altiplano morning. After climbing over all the 'extra' passengers that filled the aisles we found ourselves in a
deserted town
sharing the hotel verandah with a barefooted, wild-haired
and wild-eyed woman who kept muttering incomprehensibly. At around 6:30
a breakfast shack opened up and we gratefully drank our hot 'api' (a
maize drink) with fried pastries. Slowly the transport hub of
Patacamaya was awakening but it was only at 7:30 that we finally got
into the hotel courtyard where the bikes were kept. Desperate for a
warm bed we promptly moved to a friendlier place next door after the
managers less than helpful attitude. Their reticence can at times be
very frustrating. Next stop La Paz.