Tips 👏
- It’s a small city in the mountains, but it’s actually the capital of Bolivia.
- Buy some altitude pills, called Sorochi, before arriving there since the elevation is 2800 meters.
- It’s a good place to start your Andes trip since it’s not as high as La Paz or Uyuni and give you some time to acclimate.
- Most of the touristic places are closed Sunday and Monday, so plan accordingly.
- You can walk everywhere, but it’s high so you might struggle. Taxi and shared taxi are safe.
- The airport is 40 minutes away from the city, but plenty of official cab at the arrivals.
- The general cemetary is nice but not incredible. If you’re short on time, don’t go.
🏠 Accommodation
We stayed at La Dolce Vita in the city center. Very big and clean room and perfect location.
🚲 Getting there
Flight from Santa Cruz with BOA of 1h.
⏱ Duration
We stayed two nights and three days and felt that was good.
❌ Miss
We didn’t had time to checkout the Parque Cretacio outside of the city because of bad timing, but the website looks pretty cool!
Sucre city 🔘
We started our exploration day by checking out the Mercado Central. It’s a massive market with all the locals and fresh food around. The fruits area is awesome, smells good, and you can buy fresh juice for 5Bs. At the top floor, you can also eat some local dishes for less than 1£.
Then, we went to the Plaza 25 de Mayo to chill and appreciate the local architecture. Allow some time to walk around this beautiful city to spot all the tiny white churches and towers. We then headed to the Capilla de la Virgen de Guadalupe, one of the cathedrals of Sucre. Beautiful place if you’re into churches. Not too much our case but we still found it pretty cool. There’s also a crypt underneath where you can see a dead dude in a coffin, 30Bs the entrance.
After that, we went to the Templo de San Felipe Neri. That you can’t miss, it was our highlight. An old beautiful covent, where you can go on the white rooftop and enjoy the view of the city from its centre. Take the time to admire the panoramic view and make sure to climb at the top in the twin-bell towers, 15Bs for the entrance.
Later, we took a cab to the Monastery de La Recoleta, our second favourite. Count around 20Bs for the cab, and admire the view at the top. You’ll find a white arcade with the view on the city and mountains. Perfect time to enjoy a nice beer! Before heading down, make sure to visit the church at the top. Like two idiots, we didn’t been, but we saw the pictures online and that look pretty cool. We took the Calle del gato negro to get back down, very cute and instagram friendly. We stopped at a local restaurant, on top of La Recobita supermarket, where we scored a piece of chicken with some pastas for 10Bs, a good bargain!
We walked 10 minutes after to the city to make our last visit of the day to the Convento Santa Clara. Much more tiny than the other one, but very pretty. There’s actually still nones living inside so you have only 10 minutes to see the patio and need to be quiet, 20Bs to visit.
Bus to Uyuni 🚎
On our last day, we decided to take the bus to get to Uyuni, our next stop. We’ve asked advices to the lovely staff of the hotel and they suggested us to buy the tickets online, and get to the station 30 minutes before leaving. We booked the trip with Trans 6 de Octubre since it’s the only company not doing official stops in Potosi, leaving daily at 9:30AM.
At the bus station, we made our way to the agency counter located at the end of the corridor at the top of the stairs. We showed our e-ticket, and got the real one printed. We then headed downstairs in front of our gate. We had to pay a fee of 2.5Bs for using the station lol. Once ready, we put our luggages in the bus, got a tag for each (do not lost it, you need it to get your luggage back) and jumped in the bus. The seats were very comfortable with a lot of leg space, and pre-assigned too, but without wi-fi or plugs. Don’t take the seats at the front of the bus since you’ll constantly be disturbed by the people coming and leaving the bus.
The first leg of the journey to Potosi took 3 hours. The bus kept stopping to board extra people because we left half empty. Also, at every stops, we didn’t had time for toilets or to get some food, we did only one toilet stop after Potosi on the side of the road, so don’t drink to much before. It’s a good idea to bring some food and water with you since you won’t be able to buy any on the way.
After Potosi, the bus didn’t do any stops and headed straight to Uyuni for another 4 hours. Upon arrival, we’ve been greeted by a bunch of agency to book a salt tour, but not too many to be overwhelming. We showed our luggages tag, took our bags back and went to our hotel.
We really enjoyed it. The views were spectacular, so make sure to do it during the day. Potosi also looked pretty cool so in the end we were sad we didn’t stopped by. If you fancy a more private option, like a taxi, we got a quote from the dude who took us from the airport, quoting us 1000Bs up to Uyuni. So that’s do-able too, but to be fair the bus is better since the road are quite steep, and also way cheaper.
Restaurants 🍲
- Condor Cafe: Nice vegetarian food for a very cheap price. Make sure to ask for a small empanada, you’ll see.
- Café Time & Coffee La Recoleta: Good place to get a caffee, but they also do various sandwich.
Hope this was helpful, you can ask us any questions on Instagram.