Sucre promised a break from the miserable weather of Santa Cruz, and it delivered. It was just what I needed to adjust to life in Bolivia.

A quick 30 minute flight over some beautiful mountains and valleys and I had arrived. Freezing and with the hostel pretty empty, I walked to a local bar and sat down for a meal and some drinks. I ended up drinking with a Scottish girl named Kelda for the rest of the night (and survived) and spent the next day or so with her and her friends exploring the city on foot.

Sucre is renowned as a place where travellers hang around longer than initially expected. A lot of time is spent in cafes, restaurants, or just walking around the city and appreciating the year long spring climate. It's no surprise I ended up staying here for longer than a week. Although there were other factors at play for that decision, which I'll get to later.

On Tuesday myself and a few others took a tour out to the Maragua Crater, a beautiful place just outside of Sucre. It involved a relatively small Inca trail that was previously used by the indigenous people to get obsidian from the crater, for use in making weapons to fight the Spanish. Now, inside the 10km wide crater is a small town which is home to many farms and even a school of around 300 children.

The next day I went with a group from the hostel on the walking city tour, which is probably one of the best city tours I’ve done so far. It was run by a local student, with the profits going to a Bolivian charity. Our guide took us to a many of historical points of the city and explained their importance - one of particular interest being the shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Sucre. Housed in a Chapel in the middle of town, it has been adorned with so many jewels that it has been estimated that the sale of these gems would make Bolivia one of the riches countries in Latin America.

Our guide also showed us the best places to eat at the central markets, and in the afternoon we stopped by the local watering hole for a drink. We had some beer and then tasted a Bolivian specialty ‘Chicha’, which the women prepare by chewing on corn and spitting it into a bowl. The saliva is supposed to assist the fermentation process, but it could also just be a great trick to play on tourists.

Afterwards, our group was standing outside chatting and I stopped to take what looked like at the time an interesting photo - an old man perched up against the wall of a two tone house. It turns out he was incredibly drunk and just as I took the photo, he begun to fall...

We rushed over to see if he was okay, and called an ambulance for good measure. And the tour went on! We finished up at La Recoleta, a popular vantage point of Sucre which gave us this incredible view:

For many tourists, after Sucre the next logical step is by bus to a nearby town called Potosí. At just over 4,000m above sea level, it’s home to an infamous mine whereby the workers suffer incredibly difficult conditions for little to no pay. Unfortunately, there was quite a serious riot ongoing which is preventing any buses from making it there (or even to the next city, Uyuni).

So after trying to wait it out for a couple of days, we soon discovered we were kind of stranded in Sucre. We visited the bus terminal in search of tickets to Potosí or Uyuni, but there were none available. Word was getting around about the amount of road blocks, and even incidents of fires, tyres being slashed and rocks thrown at the buses was not uncommon. Even the people who had managed to get a ticket had no guarantee of getting there, and a lot of them returned back to Sucre.

In the end, Will, Klaus and I opted to bite the bullet and get a flight out this evening to La Paz - and go down to Uyuni from there. Not ideal, but luckily I'm the position of having plenty of time and flexibility in my schedule (for now - less than 8 months to go!).