Tom:

It´s all altitude, altitude, altitude with us isn´t it? Well we promise this´ll be the last time it´s mentioned in our blogs, as we´ve reached the highest point above sea-level of our trip - Potosi (the world´s highest altitude city) which stands at 4070m - and it just so happens that it´s my favourite location in Bolivia so far. Sucre was unimpressive to me - I don´t think that having lots of walls painted white really warrants a UNESCO status, and as I mentioned earlier, La Paz is rubbish. To give you an idea of how high up Potosi is, compare it to Europe´s highest point - Mount Elbrus of the Caucasian mountain range - which stands at 5,642m (if you believe Wikipedia). So this city is only 1500m or so lower than the uppermost peak in Europe! Anyway, enough dribbling over altitude facts, more on Potosi, and for this I´ll hand it over to Nil...

Nil:

Hey all! So we´re in Potosi, which featured on the documentary ´Around the World in 80 Faiths´ because of the strange devil statue that the miners worship called El Tio (the Uncle). This documentary was broadcast about a year ago, and I always wanted to come here, now I am here! Pretty cool! We´ve heard from a lot of other tourists that the thing to do here is to face the depths of the mines and experience the workers´ conditions who genuinely continue to work the mines in absolutely dreadful conditions. We were pretty keen to go on one of the tours, until we realised that there´s a pretty high risk of asbestos. Travellers seem to think this isn´t a problem, but I keep thinking about the time there was a risk of asbestos in one of the Downing College staircases (P staircase for any Downinites who may be reading this!) and I was scared of setting foot anywhere near it for fear of contamination... I think sometimes you forget the dangers when you´re in a different country because the rules are different. But, with this, we´re not taking the risk. It´s just not worth turning yellow for! We really like Potosi, it has a very relaxed feel to it and the colonial-style buildings and plazas are very pretty. The only problem with the place is it´s blooming freezing. I´d never have thought I was in the tropics with temperatures like these, but at least duing the day it´s sunny!

xxx