Blogs from Potosi, Potosí Department, Bolivia, South America - page 5

This blog is called "Bus Diaries" for a reason. We got really spoiled in Argentina, riding first and second class buses and we knew that in a country like Bolivia which is a lot poorer, the general standard would be lower. So we braced ourselves for our nine hour night-busride to Potosí but we could not imagine what we were in for. The bus was quite run down, the seats were worn out and the covers were broken so that the filling was hanging out. The slideable windows were provisionally held together by strings and would actually slide open during the busride. We could have managed all of this but the horror started on the road. We drove almost the entire way on a super bad gravel-/dirtroad and our driver was speeding like an insane person. ... read more

Saturday In the morning we got a bus from Uyuni to Potosi where the famous Cerro Rico mine is located. The bus journey would have been fine had it not been for two colluding babies located very near us who seemed to synchronize their shitting patterns for maximum effect. After changing the nappy of her incontinent brat, the lady behind us opened up the window and launched the fecal matter out of the bus. Now i´m not saying i would have preferred the lady to keep the nappy as a souvenir but i hope that there wasn´t a poor old sod who was quietly mulling over what he had to do that day when all of a sudden a shit strewn nappy entered his thoughts...literally. We finally arrived in Potosi and were completely caught off guard ... read more

There are a few towns and certainly a few villages found higher in the world, but they are all small. Potosi is the worlds highest city, with a population of 163,000 at a brain melting altitude of 4000m. Alongside it’s epic height, it is well known for its crippling mine system, which reaches throughout Cerro Rico a mountain looming over the city at 4824m. Potosi was founded by the Spanish in 1545 after they discovered indigenous people mining silver. During subsequent years colossal amounts of silver was mined, during which an estimated 6-8 million indigenous and African people died, directly and indirectly from the abominable conditions inside. Potosi had the banner of largest city in the America’s during the early part of the 17th century until the heavily mined silver supply began to deteriorate and the ... read more

Uyuni didn’t look any less depressing after a nights sleep - it was just much muddier as the thaw was well advanced, It was actually the first large town in Bolivia that we had been to that had predominately dirt streets - we had been expecting to see many more then we had, The roads connecting all the main towns were mostly surfaced as well, It wasn’t long ago that only 200 kilometres of main roads were paved. The bus was late leaving and we spent the time trying to dodge the drips coming from all the roofs - they were heavier than rain. There was total chaos on the street which served as the bus station as the previous day most of he buses out of the town had been cancelled due to road closures ... read more

It was as cold as we had been yet in early morning Uyuni. We walked down to the bus station, or at least the area of the street the buses leave from. They had been threatening to build a terminal for a few years now and it remained just that – a threat. A giant deep fried pancake bought on the street for about 20 cents brought peace to our complaining stomachs, and it was tasty too. Pretty simple – take a piece of light bread dough, not quite as runny as a pancake, roll into a ball then out flat, drop it into hot oil...et voila. The bus to Potosí was mostly gringos. It cost a whole 25 Bs for the trip, all five hours of it. We bought the ticket off one of the ... read more