It was a good day today! I felt like I did a lot, but don’t
have very many pictures to show for it, unfortunately. I started off the day
relatively late for my traveling days – I left the hostel around 10am. I wanted
to get in as much sleep as pleased me, and then headed out into town! My first
stop was a small little place called Centro Cultural Masis – I had written down
its information without really knowing what it was. No regrets, though!
It turns out the center is a place of music – of preserving
traditional music of a group called La Masis. They have an extensive collection
of all kinds of instruments of Bolivian tradition, as well as many gifts from
others in the musical world, from other parts of South America. They also had a
room with dozens of masks, many used for traditional dances and Carnival – a
huge 3-month celebration in all of Bolivia. It is partially funded by the
proceeds of Masis, the group, that travels the world and apparently was in
Texas last year! They have classes for kids to keep them off the streets and
provide them a great place to stay. As I was the only one there at the time, I
wasn’t sure if I was able to take pictures or not, so I don’t have any, but the
instruments were beautiful!
At that time, I wanted to leave for the Cretaceous Park and
dinosaur footprints there, and after some wandering around and asking several
people, I finally figured out how! The park entrance was very cute – they have
life-size replicas of all sorts of dinosaurs, and I arrived just in time to go
see the footprints on the first tour.
The dinosaur footprints were a lot cooler than the ones in
Toro Toro – simply because there were a lot more and you could see them much
more clearly. I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to capture them very well in
my pictures, but in person they were definitely worth the trip there.
The Park itself is located on a pretty high mountain, so it
gave a great view of Sucre as well!
When I got back, I decided to make my way to the Museum of
Indigenous Art that I passed by but was closed yesterday. It was pretty
extensive, and they had books of translations of all the signs around the
museum – it turned out to be a ton of
information. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed, but the content was
similar to the poncho museum that I visited in Copacabana.
What I thought was most interesting was the difference
between cloths woven by women and those woven by men – the women’s tapestries
had more intricate detail while the men’s had larger, more crude shapes that
resembled that I would expect from a child. I had originally planned on
spending no more than about an hour in the museum, but with all the information
and different rooms, as well as the complete English translations, I ended up
staying closer to 2-3 hours. It was worth it, though!
On my way back to the hostel, I stopped by two tourist
information spots to ask about the 7 Waterfalls attraction. It sounded
interesting, but both ladies told me that it probably wasn’t worth going,
especially independently. The area is apparently a little dangerous and not
worth going to during the winter. In addition, because there is a
blockade/barricade in Potosi right now, I would not be able to go directly to
it or go from Sucre to Uyuni. My best option would be to go from Sucre back to
Cochabamba, to Oruro, to Uyuni. Well, at least I can meet up with Daniel in
Cochabamba and ensure that we get on the same bus and tour and everything.
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