Erin & Regan's South American Adventure

Hola,

The next day we emailed our travel agent to ask what to do about our insurance claim.  She gave us a toll free (yeah, not in Sucre apparently) number to call for assistance.  We called and they told us that to make a claim we would need to send them original documents etc... we explained that we would like to know if our police report was sufficient before we sent it away just in case we needed more information from the police etc.  They said we could fax it for confirmation, and so the first saga began...

First off we couldn´t get a fax to send, we tried 6 times all up.  Each time it would connect and then fail giving an out of paper at the other end type error.  We called them back, they had paper, we tried some more...

We had no luck that first night and decided to try again the next morning.  We tried and failed once more before being directed to the main telephone office and they sent me over the road to a small place where it was finally sent.

However, the police report was not very dark and the fax wasn´t legible enough at the other end, and so began the second saga...

We hunted around for a photocopy place which could darken the report, however it appeared either that they had no idea what they were doing or the machines were not good enough.  We asked around for the "best" place to go and got directions, it was, however, closed for the weekend.

At an empasse we decided to book a ticket to Tarabuco for some retail therapy.  It is a place 64kms from Sucre known for its weavings.

The locals wear all manner of interesting gear, these clothes are not costumes they actually wear this stuff every day, no joke.

The stalls were all much alike, with hats, bags, weavings, and clothes made from Alpaca etc.

Our purchases, note our new hats.

Upon returning to Sucre we decided to go hunting for a place to learn spanish.  It being our main goal here.  We hunted around and found many schools and a few private teachers.  We settled on Patricia a private tutor with many good books and resources to draw from (apparently, the schools don´t have any books, crazy!).

On monday the saga continued... The photocopy place finally opened for business and they were able to make a copy.  However the fax place was out of order and the main office over the road failed to send!  We gave up on it for an hour or so then returned to the original place (no longer out of order) and finally managed to send the report.

All this effort and we still do not know whether we need more information from the police here... we now have a claim form and then we´ll have to send all the original documents home to make a claim.  Fingers crossed they arrive!

Assuming our claim is accepted we still have the problem of replacing the items.  Items cannot be sent here (the Leatherman is a knife and the PDA a communication device, both these things are prohibited).  It´s also unlikely we can find the same items in Bolivia, perhaps duty-free or in a more developed country, but not here.

We have been taking lessons for a week now, 4 hours a day, 5 days a week.  As part of the lessons we went on a little field trip to the hills outside of town.  With us went another student "Remo" and two past students now working here in Sucre.  It´s fair to say we understood less than 50% of what was said on the trip, and I didn´t say much (partly because I had nothing to say, and partly because I didn´t know how to say it).

The locals use the native trees to dry/store food for their animals in the months where there is less to eat.  It looks rather odd.

This is our spanish teacher next to an oven for baking bread.

This is a local house we visited.  The owner went on for some length about religion among other things, he was most passionate.

His son.

The local home owner and our spanish teacher.

The chicken coop.

 

On another day we did our own little city/park tour and photographed this local obelisk/monument.  It was paid for with money taken from local bakers who were misrepresenting the weight of their bread.

Well, that´s everything... we´re finally up to date on our blog.  Woohoo!