Potosi

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Three hour journey from Sucre to Potosi where we arrived in the evening. And are obstructed by a parade. It´s the week before the elections and the week before Easter and everywhere you go are parades. By children (who poke you with their batons if you happen to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time) by teens, adults, political parties, workers etc...

Got to the hotel, went to eat and went to bed.

The next day I woke up and headed off to the mint with Suzanne and Sarah. An English tour was to start at 9am. After rushing to get there on time, the woman who runs the ticket office was 20 minutes late for work so we just sat and waited in the impressive building.

The first thing we saw was an old train used to transport the silver which was cool. We then moved on to look at tonnes of galleries of paintings that had absolutely nothing to do with money and mostly to do with Jesus. Didn´t really get the point but it got better.

The money isn´t actually made in the Mint anymore or even in Bolivia for that matter (mostly Canada or France) but we were able to see the history of the coins and how they were made. The machines were massive! No idea how they moved them (or actually it may have been with donkeys or something.) My favourite room was the mineral room with all the sparkly things (of course!)

On the way back, we ran into two more parades (and I was poked with a baton by a 12 year old with too much power) and had to wait ten minutes to cross the road.

Everyone except me went to visit the silver mines. After seeing how small the mines were on the film, I knew I´d freak out if I couldn´t see an exit so I stayed back, went to the San Francisco church and went for a browse the markets and only managed to get caught in two parades but one of them was a political party and gave me a wonderful poster of two old blokes who I assume were important in the party.

That night we went to dinner and of course, got stuck in the biggest procession going. It took us about 25 minutes to get all of us through it but we were at least rewarded with a fireworks display at the end.

I think I was quite happy to leave Potosi, it wasn´t my favourite place in Bolivia. Next stop - Uyuni.

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