Bolivia: Sucre and Potosi

After exploring Sucre’s compact colonial city centre, settle down in one of the city's little cafés for a crêpe, juice, ice cream or coffee. Bolivians have a seriously sweet tooth and there is plenty of choice of quaint colonial venues in Sucre.

Visit the weekly Sunday market 54km outside of the beautiful colonial city of Sucre in Tarabuco. The atmosphere hovers somewhere between market and fiesta, with the main plaza and side streets acrush with Yampara indians in their beautiful traditional dress selling and buying everything from snake oil to suckling pigs. The high-quality textiles are some of the best in the country and make lovely souvenirs from a memorable day.

Head to the ASUR indigenous Art Museum, housed in a fine 17th century colonial building. Exhibits include antique textiles, musical instruments and ritual artefacts. The  Weavers Gallery, where you learn more about indigenous weaving techniques and designs, is excellent. For something completely different in the afternoon, take the “dinotruck” from Sucre’s main square to inspect the dinosaur footprints just outside town (there are 5,000 of them visible in a single cliff side!).

Not only one of the highest cities in the word (4090m), Potosi was once also one of the richest thanks to the vast deposits of silver held within Cerro Potosí (Rich Hill), the mountain that looms over the city. Today the remnants of the city's former wealth remain in some of the finest colonial architecture and public buildings in all of South America. But with the silver now exhausted, the visit to the mines reveals centuries-old harsh working conditions - a salutary experience.