Out of all the places we visited in Bolivia, Potosi was definitely our favourite. It's the highest city in the world, but thankfully we didn't suffer too badly with altitude sickness! We arrived around lunchtime so the first thing we did was to head into town to sample Potosi's speciality; chicken and chips! We then went for a wander down to the market and around the town. The streets are very narrow, our truck struggled to navigate them and we nearly took a few trees with us on the way to the hotel! We wanted a nice chilled evening after our journey so we headed down to the local cinema to watch 'The Watch,' a comedy with Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughan and Richard Ayoade. We had our own private screening, probably because it was in English! After the film we got some takeaway street food and were on the way back to the hostel when we came across a parade, which happened to be part of a religious holiday held for 3 days every year. Most of the men and women danced up the street to the church in lines to brass band music. We could hear the music and fireworks from our hotel, which went on for most of the night! Our next excursion was to the silver mines of Potosi, although it's still a working mine, not much silver can be found there any more and other minerals are mined instead. We were all kitted up with hard hats etc (check out the pic!) then went to buy gifts for the miners including drinks and coca leaves. The miners appreciated our gifts because the conditions down there were appalling. The miners don't wear any safety equipment as we did, and it's too dusty to eat down there so they often work 12 hour shifts with no food. They only chew coca leaves to stave off hunger, and drink sugary drinks for energy. It got more upsetting when we met an 18 year old miner who had just finished a 12 hour shift, who told us how he earns around 150 Bolivianos a day (about 15 pounds). The walkways are very low in places and we even had to crawl at times, but as most Bolivian people are a lot shorter than us, they didn't struggle as much as we did! After a hard morning down the mines, we thought it would be nice to go to a thermal lake for a swim! Here we saw people making natural mud masks, so we decided to copy them, as our guide told us the mud was good for our skin, but our skin was so dry at that altitude it would have taken more than a mud mask to cure! This was our last day of activities in South America as the next day was spent making the long journey to our final destination; La Paz! Unfortunately it took even longer than expected to get there as our truck broke down en route, so we hardly had any time in La Paz itself. We just had time for a quick meal before saying goodbye to the members of our group. What was meant to be an early night before a 5am start ended up being a late one as we didn't get to bed until half 1! The next few days were pretty horrendous with a ridiculous number of hours spent at airports (where the expensive food wiped us out of dollars, but was the only thing that kept us going!), and 3 flights between Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Auckland, but we don't want to dwell on this. So bring on New Zealand!