Farewell to the White City!

Hi guys! When we arrived in the beautiful Bolivian city of Sucre two weeks ago, the first thing I did was unpack all our suitcases. After 7 weeks of living out of bags, I was ready for some drawers! We spent two weeks living like locals in our little apartment. We shopped at the market down the road, walked to the bakery in the town plaza for fresh bread and cinnamon rolls, played at the neighborhood playground, and joined the local gym. We've been happy here. Here are the girls snuggled in their favorite spot in the city, the swinging chair at the bakery:

Nearly every day I tried my best to get out of my comfort zone. I spoke Spanish even when I knew my verb conjugations were wrong, I let the kids and myself take up space and be ourselves despite the heightened attention on the giant Americans (oh the stares we got, especially when Ryan was with us), and I just wandered the town with the kids without a set schedule or expectations. I even found myself strolling (strolling!!!) down our street once or twice. I'm never going to be a "relaxed" person, but I hope I can integrate more of these moments of self-acceptance and ease into my life, especially back home.

One of my favorite moments in Sucre was when the kids and I had lunch at Cafe Mirador San Miguel, a restaurant built into an old church bell tower. We climbed 10 flights of super skinny stairs and then were alone in the bell tower overlooking the city.

We ate a delicious lunch (yes, the waitstaff climbed those same stairs with the food) while the kids relished being free to explore such a cool spot. A school band marching around the town square even provided some dance music. It was just easy breezy fun. (Oh, and the fourth child in this pic is Felicia, pronounced "fah-lee-seeeee-uh," who joined us in Sucre.)

We also did our fair share of being tourists and seeing the sights on weekends when Ryan could join us. We explored the Maragua Crater, which is about two hours outside Sucre. We started off with a 4km hike on another Inca trail, which we loved.

We continued our devil theme and visited La Garganta del Diablo (Devil's throat), which is a cave set into a cliff overhanging a waterfall. The stalactites and stalagmites form gruesome teeth inside the cave, which, naturally, visitors climb inside. It was wild and beautiful and pretty scary, considering the name.

We heard that no trip to Sucre would be complete without a visit to el Parque Cretácico (aka Dino Park), so we did it! It was AWESOME. Imagine a wall 1.5km long and 180m high that is covered with over 12,000 dinosaur footprints that are 65 million years old. Wait, it gets better. Now imagine that wall used to be the flat ground before tectonic plates pushed it up in an accordion fold to create a vertical wall. It's impossible for an iPhone to capture the magnitude of this wall, but here you go anyway:

Scientists use the footprints to study social behavior of the dinosaurs, like how sauropods walked in herds with their young in the middle to protect them from predators, and how the therapods hunted in packs to get to the young sauropods. One more cool thing: the wall was discovered in the 1950s when the neighboring cement factory was mining for limestone by making giant cuts into the hillside. Upon seeing the footprints and fossils, they called in Swiss scientists, who verified the origins of the fossils and footprints. Thankfully, there was too much magnesium in that part of the hill to make good cement, so the factory allowed the wall to be preserved. Now, 70 years later, the wall is sliding (see that V-shaped slide in the top photo), and even more footprints and fossils are being revealed. Way too cool!! Needless to say, we loved Dino Park.

Our apartment was just down the street the Recoleta, a monastery and plaza in the hills of Sucre, so we hiked up whenever we needed to get out some energy. The views overlooking this white city are always stunning. Here's Baker looking extra cute at the Recoleta.

(This sweet kid had a rough time last week and ended up visiting a Bolivian hospital for a checkup, but he's feeling all better now!) On our last night in Sucre, we watched the sunset from the plaza at the Recoleta. It seemed like a perfect goodbye to a city we enjoyed so much.

We are leaving tomorrow morning for a couple weeks on the road. We are going to Potosi, the Uyuni Salt Flats, the Atacama Desert, and then on to Buenos Aires! I'm excited to empty the drawers and fill our bags again.

We hope you all are enjoying the final days of summer vacation! We miss you!!

All my love,

Madeline