Hi Everyone!!

Again ignore the photo having real trouble uploading ours of Potosi.

Having left Sucre we headed to a mining town called Potosi. This town not only the worlds highest city was also once very very rich on par with New York and Paris (we are talking a long time ago) due to its mining of silver.

Nowadays they still mine only a very little bit of silver but mainly zinc. So whilst we were there obviously we had to go down a mine as you do. First stop we had to get changed into our mining get up. It involved over trousers, a jacket, wellies, and a helmet with headlight and battery, very sexy!!! And as you can imagine on Louise massive talk about clowns trousers!! It was crazy so small and hot but it was the dust that got to us mainly. As it was a working mine we helped out the miners with some work after digging for only literally minutes we were both knackered and hot. Dont know how they do it every day we were only down there for about 2 1/2 hours and that was plenty. Really glad to breathe fresh air. Had nothing but admiration for the guys down there and maybe our jobs werent quite so bad after all. We had to buy the miners presents just things like soft drink, coca leaves and Dynamite!!! Whilst we were down the mine we could hear dynamite going off (just praying there wasnt a cave in). But once we were back in the fresh air our guide taught us how to prepare and light the dynamite, once lit volunteers (of which we werent) had to run down a hill with it lit and run back again before it went off, and that wasnt long the noise was deafening as about 6 explosions went off nearly all at once.

After the intensity of the mines the next day we decided to have a bit of a relaxing day and caught a small mini bus (where a Bolivian woman tried to force feed Matt nearly the whole way much to Louises amusement) to a hot lagoon in the middle of nowhere. It was a lovely day the scenery was amazing. And we just spent the day in the lagoon and relaxing on the side sunbathing. Much needed day of rest.

Whilst we were there, there was the annual festival for the independance of Potosi and the mines. it went on for 2 days. There were parades, parties and lots of live music. it was great fun, one night we found ourselves in a Bolivian nightclub with a bunch of Europeans, very random!!! Even the President of Bolivia made an appearance. As a climax to the festival the biggest band in Bolivia hosted a free gig in the football stadium. About 7 of us queued for about 2 hours to get in, oce we had got to the doors and up the stairs to the gate to the pitch, we all literally looked at eachother and turned round to try and fight our way back out. It was another Hillsborough waiting to happen, people were everywhere and more and more were trying to get in, it was very scary!!!!! No crowd control at all. We watched the gig on TV instead in a pub!!

Lake Titicaca next stop.

Take care

Tatey and Lou xxx