Blogs from Potosi, Potosí Department, Bolivia, South America - page 33

Cold, stiff and sweaty, we arrived in the ghost town of Uyuni having successfully survived "The 900km Crossing" No-one felt like a further 6 hour car journey but there was little debating as we felt we should spend Easter somewhere special. Our jeep collected us with one vital component missing..petrol. On a little bit of faith, syphoning from another vehicle and frequent engine checks, we were able to top up at a nearby village To reward us for our tenacity, we arrived in Tupiza and booked into our most extravagant hotel thus far. For $3 a night we were blessed with a private bathroom and SWIMMING POOL. As all the shops and restaurants were closed for easter sunday, I was sure we were doomed to a lunch of cocoa leaves and stale chocolate. Unexpectatedly though, everyone ... read more

We only stayed in Salta for two nights and then made our way over the Bolivian border (via some Argentinian roadblocks by protesting national unionist members) to Tupiza, 3000 m above sea level. Not only was this a different country, it was a different world. Being in Chile and Argentina had fooled me, going to Bolivia was like stepping back in time but with funny anachronistic touches such as the fake English Premiership football shirts and trainers for sale in the various markets I have seen so far. I thought San Pedro de Atacama was dusty, but Bolivia takes the biscuit!! First stop in Bolivia was Tupiza, close to where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were eventually cornered and killed. After an overnight here we travelled onto Potosi, an eye watering 4200 m above sea ... read more

Hi guys last time i left you i had just come across the salar and was heading to potosi. (Of course most of you will know that this is being written well behind schedule and i have spent 6 weeks in the jungle with a big cat since then, however suspend your disbelief and read on. Death defying jaguar stories will follow at some point!!!) The journey to potosi must have been one of the worst bus trips of my life, having been treated to the superb buses of Argentina and the reasonable buses of patagonia and chile i was now heading for the bus graveyard that is bolivia. The 5 hour bus journey took 7 and a half due to the fact that all buses in bolivia inevitably break down. It was all above 4000m, ... read more

Potosi was once the richest city of South America. Silver and other precious material has been mined from its Cerro Rico, meaning rich mountain, for more than four centuries. And a visit to this city is still impresive today. High in the Andes I could hardly catch my breath in the first days. At about 4100m Potosi is as high as human settlements get. While the vast number of churches and decorated colonial buildings testify the wealth of the past, the mines inside Cerro Rico still opperate today. For most of the men that are forced by the alternative of unemployment to deal with the grim reality of the mining job the situation has hardly changed compared to their comrades from the colonial times. During the mining history of Cerro Rico an estimated number of eigth ... read more

The rest of yesterday in Potosi was basically spent taking it easy. We all needed it. It was nice to just drink tea, take naps, read books, surf the internet and do NOTHING. Of course we did go back to our favorite bathroom errr..café and then we partook in some traditional Bolivian music and ate traditional Bolivian food at a local restaurant for dinner. The instruments used here, besides regular guitars, are several different lengths of pan flutes and fifes, and an instrument called a charango, which looks like a small guitar with 5 sets of double strings (that’s 10 strings for all you non-mathematically incline friends of mine!). If you pull out your old Paul Simon CDs and play the song El Condor Pasa, you can hear the sounds of these different instruments. Apparently Simon ... read more