Trusting my Gut and Staying in Sucre

Sucre, Bolivia

I think I have a good thing going here and I’m not moving…for a little while at least. I arrived in Sucre and immediately had the feeling that a person gets when leaving work on a Friday afternoon – Pure joy and excitement for the near future. There is something about this city that just clicks with me. It’s city streets are pleasant with its white washed buildings, parks and plazas that are well maintained, and busy streets. The people are friendly and I feel completely at ease. I repeat to myself or whoever is around me several times a day that ‘I love this city.’ For me, it just has ‘it’.

Whatever ‘it’ is my gut tells me that Sucre has it. In the last nine months I’ve learned to trust what my gutinstincts tell me. If it says not to eat some type of food, not to walk down a particular street or to ignore a particular person then I’ve slowly learned to completely trust it. Rebelling only seems to land a frown on my face. When everything around me is new and I know nothing about my surroundings then it’s the only barometer I have to make any judgments. So, when my gut said that Sucre is where I should stay and learn some more Spanish I listened. Then when I met Alan (The guy I had traveled with for two months throughout Argentina, Paraguay and some parts of Chile) in a cafe on Friday afternoon I took it as a further proof that I’m where I should be at the moment. Then when I met a beautiful Bolivian girl on Friday night and set-up a date for Monday I needed no more signs to stay. Yep, I’m ready to stay here for a couple weeks and see what happens.

Market Love

I love markets. There are no two ways about it. They are my absolute favorite thing about traveling and when traveling in Argentina and Chile I missed them. It wasn’t until Sucre that I realized just how much I missed them. I missed the abundance of produce. People selling whatever they can in stalls or on a blanket spread out on the ground. I can spend hours just walking around markets watching the world move around me. The business conducted in the open markets of buying, selling and bartering boils down all of the esoteric economic models learned in University and while working into the most basic theories of supply and demand. Maybe that’s why I like markets. Or maybe its just the strange smell of meat left out in the open mixing in the air with an abundance of random spices going to my head. Or, maybe I just like that I can buy a full meal for between $1.50 – $2.00. (Photos will be coming later)