Erin has managed to score a 3 month voluntary position with the Charles Darwin Foundation on the Galapagos Islands, working on project looking at the effects of tourism on the marine reserve there. It will mean a lot of diving to asses diver damage in some of the world´s best dive spots, so she´s feeling pretty lucky right now to have found a position that fits so well. We hope to get more volunteer work in another country for another 3 month stint, perhaps Colombia or Uruguay...but we´re still working on that one.
Sucre is an awesome city. It´s big enough to have lots of good places to eat and markets with fresh fruit and vegies, but small enough to avoid the choking air pollution of La Paz. Sucre also has lots of really green and shadey plazas, including the main plaza in the middle of town which is a world heritage area (a lot of dosh from the silver mines in nearby Potosi must of flowed this way over the years – at the cost of about 8 million lives in those mines during th slavery period alone). The climate is tops aswell…. It´s really warm but is high enough up top avoid the stifling heat and humidity of the tropics. But by far the best thing is the fresh tropical fruit you can get here. All sorts of fresh produce arrives daily from the country around Surce, and the tropical lowlands a little further away – including passionfruit the size of oranges. There is a fantastic central market where you can buy any type of beautiful juice freshly squeezed for about 50 cents. Bliss.
On the other side of things, there is lots of extreme poverty here, with many beggars and orphanages. Some families have to live on as little as NZ $6 a year, which is just hard to believe, as even here where we find things extremely cheap on the New Zealand dollar, it´s still absolutely nothing. It´s definitely pretty hard to get your head around how tough some people have it, in contrast with our having enough money to take a year off and travel around the world...
It´s been great having the time to relax in one place for a while, and cook our own feeds. We have also made some new friends in Berta and Pepe (her husband to be) and Mama Viki and her family. Just about everyone that we have met has gone out of their way to make us feel welcome. It´s pretty hard not to enjoy this place. The Spanish lessons have been taking up most of our time, with 3 hours lessons a day and then lots of study… that and trying to get an extension to our 30 day travel visas (requiring six different trips to the migration office, which has moved three times over the last year or so – so no one knew where it was). With visas in hand we think the next stop is a short trip into the Bolivian Amazon, one of the most bio-diverse places in the world, extended visas in hand!
Pepe, Berta, Mama Viki, Viki, Celia, and some guy with a recedding hairline......
Locals lining up to march for Bolivia´s Indpendence Day......
A fairly typical ´shop´ - this lady selling bamboo heart and oranges.
Th Sucre fire brigade
1 comment:
great to hear visa's are in hand!!!one from mum!!
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