At 13,150 ft. Breathing is hard and It is important to drink water like crazy. Potosi is an interesting and very poor city. The Inca named their city Ptojsi, which means “spring fourth” in Quecha, after the voice that sprang forth from the mountain that day. Mostly known for being a mining town. Riches that have been cut out of the Cerro Rico Mountain ever since 1545, when the Spaniards began with large-scale excavation. Its silver soon became the foundation of the Spanish Empire, and at its peak in the seventeenth century Potosí was one of the world's largest and wealthiest cities. Many of the structures in the city reflect those times. Today paid jobs are difficult to find and most people live on subsistence agriculture or small herds of Llamas and Alpacas. I did have a taste of Llama the other night(tasted a bit like lamb). With nearly 10 percent of its 120,000 inhabitants working either in the mining industry. Men are squeezed into tiny spaces and spend hours pounding a 20-inch hole out of the rock with only a metal bar and a hammer. They then insert a stick of dynamite, blow out a piece of rock, and have their assistants -- young boys, many of them not yet in their teens -- carry the debris out of the mine in a wheelbarrow.

Oxygen is scarce at 4000 meters, and even scarcer in the small tunnels of the mine. Instead of battery-powered flashlights, miners use lamps that burn acetylene gas. These old-fashioned lamps have the advantage of going out whenever the oxygen in the air is used up; mineworkers know to get out of the shaft immediately to avoid suffocation when their lamps go out. A few of our group visited the mine and brought dynamite, fuses, alcohol and coca leaves as gifts. The miners all smoke and drink heavily I’m told. Not sure of their life expectancy.

I on the other hand, after a rather cold and heavily blanketed nights sleep, walked around the city trying to stretch my very stiff legs. It’s Sunday here and it took awhile for Potosi to wake up but once it did, the markets in the squares bustled with venders selling fruit and breads. There are also indigenous ladies selling drinks, candies, tissues and an assortment of other things. Tomorrow we leave for Salar de Uyuni, amid the Andes in southwest Bolivia, it is the world’s largest salt flat.