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We caught our bus to Potosi on Monday morning with Nathan, Frankie and a whole lot of other people...literally the bus was packed and there were people in the aisles etc...one man had very ingeniously thought to bring his only little camping chair! After what seemed like 12 hours (but I think was only 7...) we arrived in Potosi. This is the world´s highest city at a staggering 4070m so we did find ourselves out of breath for the majority of the time! The city is really picturesque and we loved our time here. On our first day we went to the Casa Real de la Moneda, which was the building where they minted colonial coins. It was a really fascinating museum and we spent hours here. There was an art gallery with some amazing paintings = it was so interesting to see how the native Bolivians had copied paintings depicting the catholic faith that had come from Spain on the ships. Real talent. We got to make our own coin and you´ll see a pic of Matt wielding the hammer to stamp it! There is a symbol famous to Potosi of a smiling man, with grapes around his head. You should see this in the pics as well. There is a dispute as to what this depicts...some say it is of a wealthy Spanish settler looking gleefully down on the land and the fact that the native people were making him rich...others think that it is a native Bolivian looking mockingly at the Spanish, who think they own the land! What do you think?! Matt visited the Santa Teresa convent in the afternoon too.
One of the things that Potosi is famous for, is its cooperative mines (hence the minting house..). We booked a tour to visit the mines, having read that a visit was demanding, shocking and memorable..this was true! We were first taken to a house to get into miners gear..the pictures should provide you with endless amusement. The gear included overalls, hat, gumboots and a headtorch..OBVIOUSLY it was one size fits all! We then went to a local market (dressed in full kit of course, I´m conviced this was for the pure enjoyment of the locals!!!) where we bought gifts for the miners. These included anything from cooldrink and to coca leaves to dynamite and 96% alcohol (yip, for them to drink...) Children as young as 12 can enter the mine and are paid 30 bolivianos a day (which is the equivalent of about 2 pounds) = sadly school isn´t high on the agenda. We spent about 2 hours underground, visiting the miners and seeing their work. Miners spend up to 12 hours a day down there and the conditions are so unpleasant...so dusty and oppressive. They chew coca leaves to keep them alert and to keep away the hunger. Matt tried his hand at some of the work...lifting 50kgs bags of ore and rocks at a time. We also heard the dynamite explosions from underground which was rather unnerving! When we arrived back above ground, our guide went up the hill to explode the dynamite that our group had bought...it was a really impressive scene! The rest of our time in Potosi was spent having great dinners with Nathan and Frankie and just enjoying the town.
The dreaded lurgy hits...
The 4 of us caught a taxi to Sucre, the capital of Bolivia, just 2 hours away. Matt and I had both started feeling sick that morning and so we checked into the hotel in Sucre on arrival and spent much of our time reading, watching TV and trying to recover...luckily the American Open Golf was on! The city itself was beautiful but we didnt do too much except walk around the plaza a bit and have to take regular breaks on the benches! At every point we were accosted by shoe shine boys, with varying degrees of persuasion that our shoes needed cleaning! We did have one pretty huge bit of excitement in Sucre actually...we were due to meet Nathan and Frankie for dinner, but just before we headed out we heard a lot of commotion outside the front door of the hotel. The university students were protesting and the riot police were called in as things were turing nasty. There were fires burning outside the hotel and it wasnt long before teargas and rubber bullets were being fired...we were all watching from the hotel entrance so we did get a few rounds of teargas in us but it was all very interesting. Needless to say we ate dinner in the hotel that night! As we were both feeling so rough we decided to give up on the idea of catching a 14 hour bus ride to La Paz and flew instead! We spent a few days in La Paz, still recovering and then decided that we had been at altitude for far too long and we needed the tropical heat of the jungle to get us back to health, so we booked our flights with the others and were ready to head to Rurrenbaque on the Thursday morning!
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