The rest of Bolivia

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Bolivia has been a total blast from start to finish. After leaving Copacabana we went to La Paz to meet up with our group. Everyone is really nice, the group includes brits, Americans, canadians, french canadians and south americans.

La Paz was manic but in a great way. We walked about town and visited the witches market where you could pick up potions, charms and even llama foetuses. obviously we bought dozens! They are buried under new homes for good luck. and after leaving there we went to Cochabamba. There wasn´t much to do there but it was carnival time so went spent the three days there being pelted with water balloons left right and centre. They must get extra points for getting gringos! When dry, we spent the rest of our time drinking Bolivian red wine. It was quite nice and even nicer at 1. 80 pounds a bottle.

We then headed to Sucre on a horrible night bus. Got there after a puncture. They replaced the tyre only to find that the spare was also flat. They then flagged down another bus and borrowed theirs. Sucre is a lovely town of white colonial buildings. We were there for the last few days of carnival we (were soaked again at every turn). On the last day the hotel had a band and invited all their friends and family. Everyone, including us, were dancing and consuming copius amount of whiskey and a Bolivian spirit called Singani which was actually nice. By about 2pm we´d been at it for about 3 hours, the band moved on and we went for a well deserved nap.

On to Potosi, the higest city in the world at 4090 metres. Here is home to Cerro Rico and the silver mines. after watching a documentary we decided to go into the mines. Cerro Rico is nicknamed ´the mountain that eats men´with over 8 million deaths to it´s name since the Spanish arrived. The life expectancy of a miner who works deep in the mine is 10 - 20 years, so these guys are sacrificing theie lives to feed their families. Kids even work there starting from about 12-14 years old. Some miners do 36 hr shifts! On the way there we stopped to buy them gifts. The bag we bought included: Cigarettes, coca leaves, biscuits, 96% alcohol, dynomite and nytro glycerine!

The mines themselves were really narrow with low ceilings and we had to crowch or even crawl some of the way. One part involved climbing down through a hole in the floor to get to the next level. We gave one of the miners some dynomite which he immediately used. We were at a safe distance but we felt the explosion. It felt like someone hitting you in the chest.

Uyuni was where we started our journey over the salt flats. The town was also in Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid. On the way to the Salares (salt flats) we visited a train grave yard full of rusty locomotives. The salt flats were amazing. it was like being on a different planet. It is the largest in the world covering 12000 sq kms. At some points we couldn´t tell the sky from the floor. We had lunch at Fish island (because of it´s shape) which was covered in coral as the salt flats used to be a vast inland sea.

Over the next couple of days the scenery changed several times. We went from salt flats to desert to mountains, red, greeen and white lakes to land filled with geysers and hot springs. We went for an early morning dip before breakfast.

Bolivia was amazing with every type of landscape you can imagine. One of the girls in our group said it was even more beautiful than New Zealand.

We have now crossed the border into Chile which is really, really expensive!

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Photos

Statue of Christ
In Cochabamba, 5cm taller than the one in Rio!