WHS#26

I visited Sucre on my trip to South America in April 2016. I did basically use Sucre as a jump-off point to see sites like Cal Orcko, Potosi, and the Salar de Uyuni. In the end, Sucre kind of fell into the background for me. It's definitely a very pleasant city, one of many great colonial cities in Latin America, but nothing about Sucre really stood out for me. The "White City" (cue my white city syndrome) just didn't impress me, nor was it any prettier than some of the other colonial cities I had visited on the trip. I had just come from Santa Cruz de la Sierra, which wasn't much less pleasant than Sucre, aside from the weather. But before this turns into a ramble, let's discuss the actual experience I had, which wasn't half as bad as it might be looking now.

Flying into Sucre from Santa Cruz was one of the most memorable flights for me because it was only 35 minutes. And in those 35 minutes, you get to see the rainforest below you slowly fade into the mountainous grasslands where Sucre is located, before finally approaching the city itself, which seems to magically appear sprawling on a hilltop. Taking a taxi to the hotel, we were exposed to a bit more of a gritty side of Sucre. A lot of the buildings that aren't so close to the main square seemed to be very rundown or not from the colonial era at all (or maybe both), all the way to our hotel that was just 3 blocks from the Plaza 25 de Mayo. Even walking towards the plaza, the buildings didn't give me the historic feel I was waiting for until we actually reached the plaza. The plaza is surrounded by some of the most important buildings, including both local and national government buildings, the cathedral, and the Casa de la Libertad, as well as nice restaurants to eat lunch in. The architecture, aside from the churches, seemed to be more neoclassical or neo-baroque than the actual baroque I expected, so it ended up reminding me of government buildings that I see all the time back in the Philippines. The afternoon was spent for Cal Orcko as well as simply walking aimlessly around the historic center, which to its credit, was indeed very pleasant. The next morning, we left for Potosi, where we caught another bus to Uyuni. Side note, I will neither be rating nor writing a review for Potosi unless I can revisit, since I was never really able to spend time in either the historic center or the mines in the short layover time we had there. But yes, I don't really feel like I scratched much deeper than the surface for either city, but I feel like I spent enough time in Sucre to assess it.

I'll admit I probably would've had a more favorable view on the city if I had been able to enter one of the churches, especially to see the city from a rooftop of a church, which looks really cool in pictures. But alas, I just didn't experience anything that blew me away in Sucre. I can totally understand why many people would love it, but I just really didn't find it that special, and its seemingly weak inscription justifications ("The historic city was designed according to a simple urban plan with checkerboard- patterned streets, similar to other towns founded by the Spanish in America in the 16th century." and "excellent intact and well-preserved illustration of this architectural blending achieved in Latin America") kind of back me up here. It may be an excellent example of a colonial city, but the justifications make no attempt to differentiate it from other colonial WHS cities. Ultimately, that's how I felt about Sucre. After visiting Cuzco, Arequipa, Quito, and even La Paz, I couldn't really find any defining characteristic Sucre had over these cities, not even how "white" it is. In the end, my experience there was just a tad too forgettable for me to give a rating on par with some of the other colonial cities I got to visit.