And we made it to Sucre...

But not without a little drama.  After another overnight bus, we reached Sucre early in the morning.  The outskirts of the city look like an earthquake hit and is mostly a shanty town.  Having heard that Sucre is supposed to be the most beautiful city in Bolivia, we were pretty disappointed and actually hoping at first that we weren`t actually yet in Sucre.  But we were.  Apparently the beatiful city with whitewashed buildings just means a 5 square block radius of the city, probably 1/20th of the size of the city, has pretty buildings that are by law, white.   We got off the bus and were feeling pretty groggy as we waited for them to take our backpacks out from the compartment underneath the bus.  When Nick got his, he realized that the back of it was soaking wet and it was pretty clear from the smell that it was not water, but urine that was covering his entire bag.  Needless to say he was disgusted and we were both furious.  Upon asking the bus worker what that was about, he said no, nothing spilled back there.  Again frustrating as it was pretty obvious something leaked or someone pissed right on his bag.  We found out later that sometimes people sneak into the luggage compartment for a free ride and perhaps the gringo bag was an appealing target?  Who knows, we could speculate forever.  Anyhow, we caught a taxi and found a hostal to crash for a few days.  We figured we would inquire with CondorTrekkers, whom we planned on volunteering with, as to places we may be able to stay for the next two months.  Nick was, for good reason, in a foul mood and happy to find cable TV in the hostal room. What a luxury!  Fortunately there were big sinks for washing and we were able to soak the bag, and sadly, his sleeping bag too, in soap and water.  On top of all that, Nick got super sick that night and was in bed the entire day following (we did not realize at that point that we would pretty much be a little sick the entire two months we were in Sucre!!!).  Not a good start to the "white city!"  We checked in with CondorTrekkers and by all appearances, seemed to be a pretty chill place.  The guy who started it, Randall, was currently back in his home country of Australia and the place was being run more or less by another volunteer, Patrick, who had already been there for six months.  Patrick showed us around all of the hostals with us inquiring at each how much it would cost to live their long term.  We finally decided on a guest house, Villa de la Plata, which had a little studio apartment with a kitchen and private bathroom.  We were hesitant about paying $200 total for a month which after thinking about it seemed ridiculous considering we paid 1500 a month in San Francisco!  We were happy to put our bags down and settle in for a while after having moved around so much the last few weeks.  Just a day after we "moved in" we were informed that our first trek was set up for the next day and the clients were a couple from Romania.  This would be the first of many treks for both of us and the start of a great learning opportunity!  More to come on our treks and what CondorTrekkers is all about in our next post!