Sucre Accommodation: Hostels and Hotels

After a month in Bolivia’s constitutional capital, the time had come to move on. Sucre was an incredible temporary home, but Bolivia is huge and diverse, and we didn’t want to miss out on the treasures of its other regions. So, after a detour through the Salar de Uyuni and Bolivia’s barren southwest, we relocated to La Paz for a few weeks.

We were sad to leave Sucre, which had demonstrated a side of Bolivia which we weren’t expecting at all. Clean, historic, largely affluent and relaxed, it was almost the opposite of our preconceived notions. The people were friendly, both the locals who seemed happy to engage us in conversation, and the huge number of gringos who flock there for Spanish courses.

(… though, has anyone else noticed what we’ve dubbed “The Gringo Stare”? When you enter a bar, and there’s a solitary westerner sitting there, probably on his laptop, probably on Facebook. He will almost always look up at you with a look somewhere between disgust and disappointment. This was his bar. Your very presence is infringing on his foreign experience! Making it less authentic!)

(… and the worst part is that I’ve caught myself doing the Gringo Stare! Just when I’d finally found a bar full of Bolivians, after I’ve sat down and ordered in Spanish, so proud of my language mastery and cultural aptitude, here comes a chatty group of blonde Dutch people. Grrr. I had felt special, and so I shoot them a malicious look. I can’t help it.)

Anyway, we would miss Sucre a lot. Such a gorgeous, tranquil place to live, and though we didn’t get to explore the area nearly as much as we wanted, our 91 days was ticking down fast. La Paz promised a big shift. Messy, noisy, hectic and huge.

- Bolivia Travel Guides

Hotels in Sucre

Sucre is known around Bolivia as the City with Four Names. From its indigenous roots, through the Spanish Empire and into its present-day name which honors a revolutionary hero, Sucre has always had a bit of an identity problem.

The area was originally occupied by a group of indigenous people called the Charcas who didn’t put up any resistance when the Conquistadors arrived. In 1538, the city was brought into the Spanish Empire as Villa de la Plata de la Nueva Toledo, commonly known as La Plata. The name means “Silver”, and was a nod to the riches which the Spanish “discovered” nearby. During this time of abundance, La Plata was among the New World’s most important cities.

In 1776, The Viceroy of the Río de La Plata was established in Buenos Aires. To avoid confusion, La Plata was renamed to the tongue-twisting Chuquisaca: a bastardized re-working of the Charcas tribe’s main settlement, Choquechaca. With power ceded to Buenos Aires and the silver of Potosí’s mines petering out, Chuquisaca lost most of its former prestige. In 1809, the city’s university students rose up against the Spanish, making Bolivia the first country in Latin America to declare independence…

… and the last to gain it. Sixteen years later, in 1825, Chuquisaca was made the country’s capital city and renamed Sucre in honor of revolutionary hero General Juan Antonio de Sucre. Since then, the city’s history has been as turbulent as the country’s; in its 186 years of statehood, Bolivia has had 80 presidents. And as the capital, Sucre was the scene of a number of coups, assassinations and power struggles. An intense civil war in 1898 ended with Sucre losing power to La Paz; the judiciary is the only branch of government which remained in the old capital.

Charcas, La Plata, Chuquisaca and, finally, Sucre. Two names of indigenous origin and two of Western. I suppose that’s fitting for this incredible city, where square streets and gorgeous churches of European design are filled with people of Andean heritage. With its mixture of old world charm, rich history and boisterous street life, I think we choose a great place to start our travels in Bolivia.

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