We initially signed up for 4 hours per afternoon of private Spanish lessons (separated, as my Spansh is better than Jeremy’s), and by day 3, this had reduced to 3 hours per afternoon (because learning is hard work!). Jeremy worked on the basics, while I reviewed all the stuff that I already knew and worked a bit more on my listening and speaking abilities (basically, I paid a guy to speak repetitive Spanish at me really slowly and only in 5 out of 14873489273 tenses while I tried to tell him about all the cute dogs I’d seen recently). Meanwhile, we spent a nice week not seeing too much of the city but managing to consume some interesting foods. We thought that Sucre would be the best place to eat some dodgy-ish things, as we would have a private toilet in which to have the runs in peace if required. We also "splurged" on some pretty luxurious meals, because Bolivia is so damn cheap.
A traditional Bolivian breakfast - api (thick sweet corn drink) with a cheese empanada
Picante pollo - a traditional dish of chicken cooked in some sort of non-specific spicy sauce
Mondongo - a traditional dish of pork bits stewed in a bright red sauce. Jeremy was determined to sample this at every stall in the market (he managed about 2)
The juice aisle in the market. One of the drinks they served was a crazy beer shake (not great, far too malty)
We hit up local chocolate place "Chocolates Para Ti" perhaps a little too often for their delicious ~$2AUD chocolates drinks
Ok this is probably a very controversial stance, but Bolivian salteñas > Argentine empanadas any day. Salteñas have a delicious salty-sweet flavour, the filling is slightly soupy and they are usually consumed for morning tea (most places stop selling them after midday)
A papa rellena - deep fried potato stuffed with egg and cheese.
A tucumana - a fried pastry thing filled with (in this case) veges.
An epic watermelon and goat cheese salad. Like the other 2 items above, this was from Condor Cafe, a super cheap and delicious vegetarian non-profit place that we may have ended up at far too often, where a meal could be had for $2-$5AUD and the uncooked vegetables did not result in food poisoning
We tried a "chifa" (South American-Chinese fusion cuisine) place and it was super average. Our meal was served with these weird sauces (a weird watery mayo, a weird watery sweet chilli sauce, and a weird watery concoction of non-spicy chillies soaked in vinegar)
Attempt 2 at "pique a lo macho". The chillies on this thing were so spicy I nearly died after making the mistake of putting a whole slice in my mouth at once
The queue by "Siete Lunares", the world-famous-in-Sucre chorizo stall in the Mercado Central
Jeremy looking stoked with his Siete Lunares choripan (very different from Argentinian choripan)
We had THE BEST tiramisu at this restaurant which was basically this Italian guy's living room, which had the tiniest sign outside the door and you had to ring the doorbell to be let in if the chef was in the mood for customers. The pastas and panna cotta were very good too
We also went to the movies one night, where we paid less than $4AUD each to see the new Kong (or in my case, perve on Hiddleston) in 3D. And completely in Spanish. Luckily, it’s not like this was a film that had huge amounts (or in fact, any) character development or even much exposition of storyline via dialogue. We also tried Bolivian fast food (a luxury item here, costing as much as a 3-course meal in an average restaurant), and now I completely understand why McDonald's was so unpopular in Bolivia that it was banned.
Holy crap the patty in this burger actually tasted like beef and not whatever overprocessed cardboard they put in McDonald's burgers. Because I'm terrible, I also had "the dark waters of imperialism" (not even joking, this is what the president of Bolivia calls coca cola)
Friday market St Paddy’s day, and to “honour” Jeremy’s Irish heritage, we visited a couple of “fine” drinking establishments in Sucre. After a somewhat disappointing pint in the Irish pub, we quickly left as the oonce oonce and the hordes of wasted young backpackers arrived. We shifted our disappointment to Goblin, a craft beer place decorated with murals of... you guessed it, goblins. Then it was onward to Florin, where we’d had a nice IPA a few nights ago. We were no less disappointed here, as they ran out of IPA and we had watery stouts instead.
He's pretty tall for a leprechaun
Such a dainty beer
Beer level up!
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