Potosi - the highest city in the world!

Potosi is a mining city standing at 4070m above sea level. We arrived here by bus, surprisingly only half an hour late (its a 3hr journey that the GAP year students we met got stuck on for 9 hours) and immediately noticed the change in altitude. Neither of us have ever been at altitude before and so didn't know if we'd get it, but we probably deserved it as we had flown straight to 2700m and then jumped straight to 4000m within 2 days. We probably should have climbed a lot slower taking more time to rest (and drink hot chocolate submarinos) for a few more days but we are running out of time fast!

Altitude sickness is quite a scary thing - I felt like I had aged 60 years and that I hadnt done any exercise within those 60 years. Walking the smallest distances made us completely out of breath, my head was pounding with the lack of oxygen and all in all we felt pretty sorry for ourselves and pretty pathetic when we tucked ourselves into bed at 9pm! Last night was quite restless for me and I keep getting up to try and relieve what felt like a huge build up of tension in my head and I spent a lot of the night awake trying to breathe normally without success! (for worried parents, grandparents, whoevers...at the time of writing I am feeling much much better and there is no need to get all worried about me! We have come back down to 3500m and we both feel a lot better already!)

So this morning was a great choice of a day to go down into the horrendous conditions in the silver mines of Potosi. We didn't have much choice as our Salt Plains tour is booked for Thursday and it is another thing in a long line of places that we want to get to before the trek start date in Cusco in 2 weeks! For a bit of background, the city has a huge mountain with around 300 mines and 6000 miners working in them. The conditions are so bad that someone told us the life expectancy of the miners is around 35 to 40 years and the miners sometimes start as young as 14 years old. I warned our guide that we were not yet acclimatised and he got us some coca leaves - leaves that you chew on to get more energy and to help you with the altitude and any other nausea. We also bought some dynamite, alcohol and coca leaves to give to the miners that we met (quite a gift, eh?!). They use alcohol and tobacco as offerings to the Mine 'God' or "Tio de la Mina" who actually bears a striking resemblance to the Devil. Each Friday they offer him and the Pachamama (Mother Earth) coca leaves, alcohol and a cigarette and then they kiss the clay statue's penis to ask him for fertility and good luck in love. The guide told us all about this ritual and then suggested that we partake in the whole thing. I will let you make your own minds up whether we fell for his superstitions and stories or not!! The conditions that we saw were tough but not as bad as I had heard about. I think, given that we were having a much shorter tour, we didn't get into some of the areas which are apparently up to 40 degrees, dusty and very claustrophobic! However, given that I was still convinced that my head was going to explode and that the gentle walk through the mines might give me a heart attack, it was probably for the best!

Straight from the mines, we bid farwell to Potosi and continued onto Uyuni - the departure point for tours of the Salt Plains - part of the trip that I have most been looking forward to! yay!!

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