Good evening from Sucre, the town where the weather is fine and the food is good. I spent today giving myself a gastronomical tour of the city.
The quest for real coffee
I woke up this morning a bit earlier than expected. My plans for a lazy lie-in were thwarted by the courtyard design of this hotel, which is pretty but echoey and loud. There’s a school next door, I think, so I heard the kids arriving, screaming and shouting. The hotel staff like to shout across the courtyard at each other. And all the other guests’ conversations are highly audible, too. Oh well, what can ya do? I fell back on my rule of thumb: If possible, sleep. If not possible, caffeinate.
One of the things about travelling in Bolivia is that real coffee has been hard to come by. Ever since my awesome cup at the Condor and Eagle Cafe in Copacabana over a week ago, I’ve been subsisting on Nescafe or coca leaf tea. But here in Sucre, it’s a town filled with cafes. I eschewed the anemic breakfast at the hotel for a cafe across the street that made me a proper Americano and let me drink it in peace. Ahhh, life’s simple pleasures.
History of Bolivian independence
With proper coffee in me, I decided it was time to feed my brain a bit. I headed across the plaza to visit the Casa de la Libertad, Sucre’s history museum where the Bolivian Declaration of Independence was signed in 1825.
The museum included an impressive array of information, artifacts, photos and document replicas telling the story of the colonial days right through to independence and beyond. Unfortunately, it was all in Spanish, and so was the guided tour I tagged onto for a bit. I only caught maybe thirty percent of what was said, though it was enough to get the gist of it. Notably, one room in the museum was set up with three-dimensional busts, dioramas, an audio guide and Braille explanations for the blind or visually impaired. A great idea that we should implement in more museums back home.
The great Sucre chocolate debate
After the brief cultural interlude, it was back to food, Sucre may only be technically Bolivia’s capital in terms of where the government is run. But one thing most Bolivians can agree on is that it is Bolivia’s de facto capital of chocolate, hands down. This despite the fact that we’re actually quite far from cocoa growing regions here.
However, Bolivians do love a good debate, and Sucre has one: Which chocolate maker is better: Para Ti or Taboada? Much like the great Montreal bagel debate between St-Viateur and Fairmont, I suspected that the Sucre chocolate debate was one best solved by tasting.
I started off at Para Ti, the most famous of the two. The chocolate shop sold some bars of both flavoured and plain chocolate, as well as confections and the typical cream-filled bonbons typical of Sucre. I tasted a truffle and bought a couple of bars to take home.
Next, I had to compare, of course, so I headed a few steps away Taboada. There, the offerings were similar, and I picked up some bonbons and another bar, as well as a couple of truffles to try. All in the name of science, of course.
The verdict? Both chocolate shops sell products that are closer to candy than truly fine chocolate. I haven’t tasted the bars yet, but solely based on the truffles, I think I’m leaning towards Para Ti. Still, there are no losers in this delicious debate. I look forward to comparing the bars with those I picked up in Peru once I get home. I suspect several people reading this blog will be eager to help me with the sampling.
Incidentally, I also found out that there’s a chocolate festival coming up in Bolivia, starting next week. Sadly my timing is off by a few days. But hey, you can’t be everywhere at once, right?
Lunchtime craft beer fail
With good coffee and good chocolate checked off my list, what was left? Why, good beer, of course. Sucre has the best collection of craft breweries in the country, and the lower altitude meant that beer tasting was once again realistic.
So, I decided to take myself to Cafe Florin for a late lunch and some sampling. Florin is known as one of the best spots in Bolivia to taste craft beer. Unfortunately, when I arrived, I found out from the apologetic waiter that they actually didn’t have any beer on tap today; only bottled ones that I’d already tasted, and commercial Pacena that’s available everywhere. Plus, their lunch special turned out to be a lie, too. False advertising, eh? I felt the same sense of disappointment there that I did at the Momo Hut in Kathmandu. Dang it. Oh well.
I ended up at a small Mexican cafe near the plaza that did far-too-salty vegetarian quesadillas, but made up for it by including ice cream for dessert. You win some, you lose some.
After lunch, I spent a bit of time just walking around, browsing in the shops. There seem to be an awful lot of eyeglasses shops on the main plaza, for some reason. I poked my head into a couple of handicraft shops, but alpaca stuff is getting kind of repetitive by this point of the trip.
At that point, I headed back to the hotel for a siesta, and just took it easy for the rest of the afternoon. Hey, I’m on vacation.
Pizza, goblins, and a quest for agua
For dinner, I met back up with the rest of the group and we went for pizza to a restaurant just around the plaza. It was again not particularly Bolivian, but hey, it fit the bill. Then again, with the number of pizza places in this country, maybe it really is the national food after all.
Even after all that food and drink, I wasn’t quite done with my gastronomic adventures. I was told by everyone who knows Sucre that if I like good beer, I just HAD to check out Goblin Pub. It was still early enough for a pint, so I headed there and sampled all three beers that they had on tap.
Marcelo, the owner, runs the place with his wife and daughter — a true family business — and was more than happy to chat with me, even despite my terrible Spanish. We managed a pretty decent conversation about beer, life in Sucre, and Canadian versus Bolivian winters, helped along a bit by a Bolivian guy named John who’s been living in Switzerland and Belgium long enough to be fluent in French and English. It was good fun.
I hung out at Goblin for a bit before the cigarette smoke in the place started to get to me (Bolivia’s about ten years behind in terms of outlawing smoking indoors). The beers weren’t quite as good as I’d been led to expect, but they showed promise, and they definitely beat the heck out of the commercial stuff that’s served in most of Bolivia.
I headed back to the hotel, detouring a bit to hunt for a bottle of water, since I was running low. It was surprisingly hard to find, especially compared to everywhere else in Bolivia, where it’s sold on every corner. For a student town, Sucre’s sidewalks sure roll up early; just about every single shop in the area was closed. It took me over a half hour, and a detour back to the Mercado Central, to find someone selling some small bottles, which will only tide me over ’til morning. What’s up with that, Sucre?
Winding down
There are only two more days left of my trip. Reality is looming, and I can’t say I’m entirely sad about it. As much as I’m enjoying travelling here in South America, the pace of travel is starting to wear on me, and the lure of home beckons. I miss you all.
But first, I plan to give the Sucre region a last hurrah tomorrow, with a big day ahead. Stay tuned!