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Published: July 22nd 2008
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Potosi
At 4070 metres above sea level I'm fairly sure Potosi is the world's highest city. After the cold dorm rooms of the salt flat tour we decided to treat ourselves to a nice room, with such luxuries as an ensuite bathroom, TV, and, best of all...............heating!!! I now realise how little I appreciated central heating when I had it.
Potosi has been designated a UNESCO world cultural heritage site with a pretty main square, and lots of colonial buildings which look like they might belong in Elizabethan London with their second storeys overhanging into the street. There seemed to be an excessive amount of solicitors’ offices in the town - maybe there are lots of naughty people in Potosi. We found a dingy little bar called Offside to watch the European champions’ final and where I sampled a delightful drink called Sangini - a Bolivian spirit made from grapes.
One of the main ‘attractions’ of Potosi is the silver mines. I don’t think there’s a huge amount of silver left now; the Spanish took most of it, exploiting the indigenous people in the process who did all of the mining for them. We’d been warned that the
Streets of Potosi
If you look closely you can see one of the many 'abogado' signs (solicitor)
tour of the mines was not for the claustrophobic but were assured that the tunnels were at least two metres high the whole time. This was true. What they failed to mention was that we’d be rope-climbing up mineshaft walls, walking over deep mineshafts along very thin planks of wood and witnessing dynamite explosions.
The tour itself was very different to anything I’ve ever done before and very interesting, even if perhaps not that safe! First we bought presents for the miners: gaseosas (fizzy drinks cos it's so hot inside); coca leaves (munching on these all day means the miners don’t need to eat); dynamite (yes, you can actually buy dynamite from the street markets!) and alcohol for their Friday nights (96% no less!).
Before entering we were all given a handful of coca leaves ourselves to munch on - just made my mouth go numb really (handy at the time having a bit of a sore throat). We saw men pushing 1000kg trolleys a bit like those from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (luckily I didn’t have to eat monkey brains). Had a go a pulling up a 60kg bag on one of the pulleys
- all completely manual, but then I would have no idea what it’s like in any other mine! Watched men drilling holes for the dynamite then drying the holes with giant hairdryers before inserting the dynamite - fortunately we were asked to move before they ignited it (not sure my travel insurance covers dynamite blasts in mines). There was a slightly hairy moment when climbing down a 50metre mineshaft on a series of very rickety wooden ladders. My failing headlamp was now emitting but a flicker of light, and we were trying to move quickly to outrun the toxic gases from the dynamite explosion. So what do the idiots below me on the ladder do? Stop every 3 seconds to take a photo. Seriously, one rung of a ladder is pretty much the same as the next. (Rob - same nationality as ‘the others’!)
Sucre
Sucre is another pretty colonial town, with a reputation for making good chocolate. As luck would have it, our visit happened to coincide with the annual chocolate festival. Excellent! This meant I got to sample such delights as ice lollies dipped in chocolate, strawberries and marshmallows dipped in chocolate, chocolate liqueur in a
chocolate cup, chocolate cocktails and just regular old chocolate.
On the first night in Sucre we discovered a bar that sold my third favourite beer - Erdinger. Not sure if it was here, or the chocolate cocktail, or the caipirinha where it all went wrong………..managed to surface for breakfast the next day then straight back to bed. Take it from me, a hangover at altitude is a zillion times worse than a regular hangover (and I’ve had some bad ones..........).
Our bus to La Paz almost didn’t get going - a huge argument between pretty much the entire bus, for about an hour, about the seating arrangements - I mean c'mon, it’s just a bus, and we'll all be asleep (theoretically) for most of the night. And we seriously regretted not leaving out sleeping bags - the buses don’t have heating either, brrrrggghh.
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Rob
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The Others...
Ah, the others... I know exactly who you mean and understand the pain and frustration you probably felt :). Looking forward to the next blog entrance, I sense I am about to make an entrance - almost 2 months later than when I actually showed up!