potosi

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After a 2.5 hour taxi drive and sing along to some 80s music we arrived in the highest city in the world potosi, this place is stunning and full of character, set in the mountains its full of hussle and bussle of the local markets and food stalls. Everyone is dressed traditionally as they are indignious people, so theres lots of bright colours its amazing.

stayed at kuala hostal which is really homley and theres heating as it gets really cold up here at night, you can see the snow capped mountains from our room.

Met up with jonny again our long lost friend and went down a working mine for the day, its not forn the faint hearted or a clostrapheobic (if that how you spell it) and not for any saine person either, I was humming and harring on whether to go down of not. I can only describe it as an experience (theres no way id do it again). We started at the local market buying gifts such as cherry pop and coco leaves for the miners ...and also some dynamite for us to blow things up! we 1st visited a place to see how the stone was pulverised and made into silver dust.

We got all the gear on to go down the mine, helmets wellies, overalls etc. going down the mine was incredible i cant believe people do this for a living, crawling on my fron down tiny passage ways, not being able to brethe with the dust and scrambling over all the rick on all fours was pretty scary, we went down 3 levels of the mine, sliding down a shoot was good and when the miners are pushing the trolleys down the track you have to jump out of the way. There was alot of sweating and shuveling going on and we helped move some of the stones...i was glad to be out at the end i got to hold some dynamite that was lit and we blew some rocks up!

Next day we went to the lagooner that was about 20 mins away in the hills, was mint, so nice to be swimming.... well actually i had a ruber ring as to lazy to swim, hitched a lift back on a truck. Theres a festival on at the moment or something and the president of bolivia is coming so its all very livley here, we are off out tonght on the razzle there loads of us from our hostal so having a great time.

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Photos

getting ready to go down the mine
yes thats right we had all the gear and these are our shoes

the miners pushing a trolley
these guys work so hard for 10-15 hours a day lgging trolley filled with rock. we gave them pop, coco leaves and dynamite

Comments

[MAX]

Kate with dynamite?!?! YIKKES!!
Hey Katiewoo you globe trotter. you look like you are having a whale of a time, im sooooooooo jealous!

[shrimp]

year im the next bin larden dont you know