Sucre, Bolivia

When I finally crossed the border and arrived in Bolivia, something clicked. Rio de Janeiro and Argentina were awesome fun, but coming to Bolivia and exploring the developing world was more what I expected from my trip. Here, all the women older than their late twenties walk around in traditional dresses and braided hair. Little boys seem to all have jobs like they are full fledged adults in the work force. Ten year old kids slave away at manual labor construction jobs or at shoe shining stands or in supermarkets. The look of Sucre's roads also change drastically from the pristine, newly laid highways of neighboring nations. Here, streets are equally distributed between aging cobblestone, uneven pavement, and bumpy dirt roads. I keep seeing Toyotas, with a make long since canceled, that my mom used to drive back when I was in preschool. The Toyotas and rickety hand-me-down buses edge through these mountainous streets.

There is nothing better than Third World markets, with busy people selling kilos of vegetables, women fanning flies off of week old cheese, and meat vendors chopping feet off dead pigs so they can cheaply sell the fatty skin for BBQs. In the bowels of the Mercado Central, small comedors (which would be a stretch to translate these as makeshift restaurants) offer amazing platters of rice, roasted chicken, potatoes, small salads, and sides of soup -- all for ten Bolivianos, less than a dollar fifty. And for an extra three Bolivianos, you can pick up freshly blended fruit juices from stands close to the fruits, vegetables, and flowers section. A refreshing papaya or mango juice has flavorfully washed down every single meal I've eaten in Sucre thus far.

Bolivia is finally the real South America that I've been searching for. After my brother visits for New Years, I'm going to drop off the hostel circuit for a few months and find a community development project to volunteer with. Any suggestions of where to look?

Sucre, Bolivia