Potosi - Day 40 - 08/11/2012 (Thursday)
The bus ride was one of the weirdest so far. Hardly a car on the road and every time the driver saw a llama (in the road or even miles off the road) he honked the horn. He then stopped in the middle of no where and his wife and 2 kids showed up and came the rest of the way with us.
We arrived into Potosi (the worlds highest city -and once richest) city. It's about 4070m above sea level. This made even walking off the bus feel like you ran the 100 meter final.
Once we climbed the mountain (I mean stairs) to dump our bags in our room we went straight out. This time to an authentic Bolivian restaurant. Sarah and I got this chicken ham and cheese wrap thing and it was amazing. After dinner and sadly only about 8pm everyone went to bed so we just sat up and read.

Potosi - Day 41 - 09/11/2012 (Friday)
Potosi is famous because the mountain just outside the city used to be the largest reserve of silver anywhere in the world. Hence the city was very rich. Enough silver was taken to build a bridge from Potosi to Spain out of silver. Anyway to the point and getting away from random useless facts one if the best things to do here is go on a mine tour. Hence that's what we did first. The first part of the tour was to go to the miners market where they miners get all there supplies. Apart from the pick axes and shovels you could buy anything and I mean anything. We went to one stand and the guide showed us coca leafs that the miners chew all day to stop them feeling hungry and then she whipped out some TNT. The miners use it all the time and can be brought without a licence here. One of the guys in the group brought some as a gift for the miners. Sarah and I got them a drink and some coca. Look out for the picture of me holding the TNT and the fuse to light it!
Next we drove to the mountain and to a hut where they kitted us up with boots, overalls and a hat complete with a miners lamp. We then drove a little further up the mountain to the mine shaft we'd be entering. The first thing that stuck us was that the practices they use today have not really changed much in 400 years. Everything was manual and they had cave ins all the time. Mainly higher up the mountain in the newer shafts. He one we were entering luckily was quite old and hence a little safer. As soon as we got in the air became thinner (thinner than it already is up this high) and really dusty. We walked a fair way along a broken track for carts when we ran into 3 guys pushing out a cart with over a ton of rubble. They were having to push this out along the broken and often missing tracks. We gave them some gifts but all they really wanted was the coca.
We walked around for about an hour hearing about how bad the miners have it including that there life expectancy is 45 and although under 18s weren't allowed to work there was some boys as young as 12 working for up to 12 hours a day!
Finally we visited a shrine. It's a very odd thing to have a mile into a mountain but the Spanish made up all these beliefs to get he slaves to work harder. They still believe in these today and inside this shrine was one if the devil gods who 'owns' the mountain and they pay respect to him to keep them safe and be able to extract minerals and stuff each week. It was all very bizarre. We then left and gave the rest of our gifts to whomever we met along the way. As soon as you got close to the entrance you could really feel the air improving and once we got out into the sun we all struggled to open our eyes for a few minutes.
We dumped out kit and went back to the hotel to change and grab some lunch. After lunch we went to the minting museum. This is where they made most of the coins for S. America for many years. It was really good to see but the guide was so unenthusiastic it spoilt it a bit.
That evening after dinner we watched a parade in the town square. The city was 400 years old today so we saw all manner of marching bands, the poetry society and even the single women of the town (all very strange). The president of Bolivia was meant to be watching it somewhere but we couldn't stop him. When we got bored of watching the 20th random group of people walk by we went back to the hotel and played a few 'games'.

Potosi - Day 42 - 10/11/2012 (Saturday)
We'd kind of done everything we could in town so we lazied around until check out at 11 and then went for a drink (non-alcoholic I'll have you know) and then jumped on the bus to our next stop.