Back from Bolivia...

and resettled in Santa Cruz.
We spent this past weekend sucking up all the Bolivianness of the country's official capital, Sucre. Just a 30 minute flight away, soulful Sucre couldn't be more different from the smog and silicone-filled Santa Cruz. Unlike the boomtown where we live, which seems to ooze its tangle of dirt roads into the surrounding flatlands like an uncontrolled virus, Sucre has a charming and walkable downtown hemmed in by high steep hills. The whitewashed churches and colonial buildings look like they took more than a day to build.
The city also has a feeling of tradition that is lacking in Santa Cruz.
The Sunday market outside town offers traditional colorful weaving. Each Sunday, it's flooded by residents from outlying indigenous communities wearing helmets and pompommed hats whose styles are fancified versions of the helmets worn by the Spanish conquistadores 500 years ago.
Note the photo of the red bags filled with dried leaves. They are coca leaves, the main ingredient for cocaine. The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars trying to eradicate this crop from Bolivia, causing great resentment from those like the customer depicted, who enjoy chewing the leaves to combat fatigue.
Sonya and I also spent a few hours exploring a cement quarry where several thousands of dinosaur footprints were discovered 10 years ago. If you look behind Sonya -- she's the one too vain to wear her hardhat -- you'll see a dark trail in the limestone wall. Those are the prints of some long-dead lizard.
(As always, click on photos to enlarge)