Joyride Cafe

Sucre
27th February - 2 March

The large size of our travelling group, including the Awesome Foursome, Thomas and Louise and Sarah (who we reunited with in Potosi), meant that it was more worthwhile to catch a 1 and a half hour taxi ride to Sucre. This was our first encounter with real Bolivian driving we´d been warned about! Points included excessive hooting at anything and everything within a 50m radius, hooting as a substitute for indicators, overtaking on blind rises and corners, and avoiding ever coming to a complete standstill in traffic.

We found a hostal on a main road opposite a huge local market with smelly rooms and beds that smelt of seweat. Been-there-done-that Sarah, immediately lead us to the Dutch-owned Joyride Cafe near the main square for lunch, which subsequently became our stomping ground for the next few days. This was Ron and Maarten´s highlight of Sucre (or possibly of the past 2
weeks!) as they were in their element with free Wi-fi, typical Dutch food and Heineken.

The following day the 7 of us, missioned up to the 7 Waterfalls. We caught a local bus where we made friends with a 9 year old shoe shiner. He kept us and the rest of the bus entertained with his friendly conversation. We were in hysterics when his reply to Ron´s question about his school hours innocently included "y tu?". He also tried to guess our ages: Ron - 40 Maarten 43 Nicky 31 and Gayle 28.. He also kindly stayed 2 minutes longer on the bus past his stop so he could point us in the right direction to walk to the waterfalls which earned him a few Bolivianos.

After a bit of a dull hour walk along the gravel road, we spent the afternoon swimming, sleeping and relaxing at one of the falls. The walk home was yet another Inca training session. While waiting for the bus at the top of mountain, Ron, Maarten and Sarah played football until the game was ceased when Sarah made a spectacular wipeout while running for the ball and landed head first in the dirt!

That night we had supper in Joyride Cafe, and the following morning met everyone there again for the Treehuggers breakfast (muesli and yoghurt). Maarten, Nicky and Ron went for a mountain bike ride around the outskirts of Sucre - awesome views of the Cordillera de los Frailes, dodging pigs and sheep, avoiding yapping dogs, and a downhill to prepare us for the upcoming World´s Most Dangerous Road.

Gayle had a day of chilling and ended up spending 7 hours in Joyride drinking a few beers with Sarah before getting the wagging finger for taking the 4 o´clock photo in the supermarket.

We reunited (at Joyride) after the cycle and watched the evening movie "Crash" (at Joyride) At suppertime, we put our foot down and dragged the boys away from theri beloved Joyride to its competition. The boys spent the follwing day playing internet poker (in Joyride). By this point we had had enough (of Joyride) and went for a scintilating museum tour on Bolivian political history where everything was in Spanish and it basically consisted of portraits of every single Bolivian president dating back to 1600´s. We had lunch at a courtyard cafe while the boys stayed (in Joyride).

That evening we caught the bus to La Paz. The bus terminal had an interesting system where you checked in your luggage at the floor about which was then attached to a hook and a rope and lowered down to the bus with little warning to unsuspecting bystanders who occasionally received a bash to the the head!