Our Great Adventure: Tarabuco market Day 255 31/05/2015

After another excellent breakfast at our lodgings we headed into the centre of Sucre to wait for our tour bus to take us to Tarabuco. The indigenous village, 65km southeast of Sucre, has a Sunday market and is apparently the most renowned place for textiles in Bolivia. There were quite a lot of people waiting to go on the tour so we were split into 2 parties to take a micro bus each. We were immediately told that we would be returning at 1300 instead of 1500 but we weren't told why (could be due to the ongoing strike or maybe the drivers had a "hot date" that afternoon!). The two hour journey to Tarabuco involved us climbing up 3 ridges and down 2 valleys to arrive there at 1000 at a height of 3200m. On arrival we were ushered into a patio area which served as both a restaurant and stage for local shows. The lady who greeted us provided us some good information on how to walk to the market (which was only a few blocks away), gave us a few phrases we could use in Quecha, the local language, and what to look for to determine if the textiles on sale were either original or fake (it's all down to the feel - the rougher it feels the more assured we can be it is genuine). After this we had a bit of a sales pitch about coming back to their restaurant to eat and watch a local dancing show at 1230, but we declined the offer to reserve a table in advance and walked into the main plaza. This was a typical Spanish style square but the 4 statues were all of local people slaying the Spanish in the war of independence in the 1810's. One was rather gruesome as you will see from the photo below. We walked around the square, went to the local tourist information centre (which as usual for Bolivia was closed) and wandered around a few of the narrow streets where market stalls were in abundance. Everything was for sale there from toiletries, domestic cleaning goods, crappy sports clothes (not out of place in Sports Direct!), TV and audio goods (last seen in the 90's!), footwear as well as lots of stalls selling the locally woven products. The cloths were of good quality and Diane remarked that she would have bought one if we were here on holiday but not now as we would have to carry it around for the next 4 months. We headed back to the square and stopped at a cafe and enjoyed a bottle of coke each. The 'waiter' was the son of the owners who Simon got chatting too and in his best Spanish found out his name was Martin, 9 years old, had three siblings, didn't like football but liked baseball, his school was 2 blocks away and he was tall for his age and his whole family were one of the tallest in the village. Martin also said a lot more but that was the extent of Simon's Spanish. Martin was intrigued with Simon's baseball cap, didn't know what cricket was (a type of baseball was the best we could explain) and when we went through the country's badges on the cap, he knew a few of them but not all (impressive geography knowledge). After a quick photo of him, he advised the bill for the drinks was B$14. Simon gave him a B$50 note and he went into the cafe for what we thought was get us change. We waited for 10 minutes and after still no sign of Martin, Simon went inside and asked his sister to find Martin and our change. He came back a couple of minutes later and gave us B$6, stating we only gave him a B$20 note. Simon's Spanish is good enough to tell him 'no, it was a B$50 note' and with a shrug Martin produced the other B$30 from his pocket. Cheeky little sod and we thought we were friends! However he had a cute smile and he did help with Simon's Spanish so we gave him a B$2 propina (tip) and told him to be more honest with us gringos in future. With a shrug and a wave he was off. By now it was 1200 so we had another stroll around, ate our biscuits and tangerines we had brought with us (we are still not brave enough to eat the street food) and then headed back to our meeting point. The restaurant was full, thankfully the show was over so we hopped on the bus and headed back to town. Diane's eyes were smarting from what she thinks is due to the strong sunlight (she had to wear Simon's hat for most of the day) and she slept/kept her eyes closed on the return journey. We arrived back in Sucre at 1430, took out some more money from the National Bank of Bolivia's ATM (we can take out the full amount of £300 unlike Chile and Argentina where it's less than half that, doubling the bank fees when we were there) as most places including the b&b want cash, enjoyed a crepe chocolate (Di) and apple crumble with ice cream (Simon) at a local French Patisserie, then headed back to Casa Verde to read and plan in the late afternoon sunshine.