Potosi is famous for it s co-operative mines. Each guy can work for as long as wants to get mineral sout of the mountains that surround the city and get paid for what he brings up. Unfortunately the minerals that they have to bring up by hand usually weigh around 50kg! The dust that they breathe in contains so many toxic chemicals that most die fairly young. The youngest miners we saw on our tour was 14-the oldest 62. They survive by chewing mass amounts of coca leaves that numbe them towards the gases, dust, cold and hunger. They also have a 96% alcohol that they drink to keep them going! We tried it ebfore we went on the tour int he miners market-like paint stripper-no wonder they die early!

The tour was the best thing I have done for a long time. We had to wear protective colthing, hard hats and lights. We all got lead in to this dark tunnnel and then the adventure began! We chose to do the adventurous tour, which meant climbing up and down walls of rock, crawling through tight spaces and generallñy getting very dusty and scared. Trying to reach the floor when climbing down to the next level, and there{s a 100m hole just to your side and you re feeling like you are going to go down it is not a good thing to do at all! Anyway we survived, and went out to celebrate a girls birthday in the group that night.

It was all going so well until two guys that we had met decided to jump onto some cars on the way to another bar (you will be pleased to know that I was sensible and had gone home by this point). Anyway the cars turned out to be military police-people you do not f*** with in Bolivia. They made everyone get into thier car, took them back to the hotel and took thier name and passport details. Our tour guide said that if they get in trouble again, they may end up in jail, or may not be able to get into the next country-sounds like a lucky escape to me.glad I was stumbling home slightly before them!

Forgot to say...how Im going to be a celebraty in Bolivia! We were wondering around the main square when the tourist police(yes they have such things in these strange countries) came up to us and asked us if they could take our pictures. We said ok and found ourselves in various poses with them, looking at maps, going oh and arghh! so that they could put some gringo pics in thier tourist brochure. How cool is that?