Beautiful Backward Bolivia

Showing How Its Done

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The art of flinging a stone at a sheep.

Giving It A Shot

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Tom trying the stone-flinging while she tries her hand at taking a photo on Tom´s camera. They should both probably stick to what they know!

Local Football

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In South America soccer is for the young and old, male and female.

The Miners

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Potosi was the epiphany of Spanish exploitation of the South American continent. Here they removed over 62 000 tons of silver for exportation to Spain, which fuelled the economic revolution there, although it is estimated that almost 8 million miners died for it. Meanwhile Bolivia remains poor. Recently miners have returned to this place in search for zinc and other minerals that are left over.

The Miners

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Whilst a tourist mine does exist, it is possible to visit a real mine still in operation, as we did. Not the safest thing though as the mines are in really bad condition, and it´s probably only a matter of time before it collapses and kills a Japanese tourist - these kind of things for some reason always seem to happen to the Japs!

Gifts for the Miners

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To visit their mine you should buy the miners all sorts of gifts. These generally include really strong alcohol (96%!), coca leaves, and dynamite.

Gifts for the Miners

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TNT

Devil´s Irony

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In an effort to try and convert the locals to christianity, the Spaniards blamed the number of deaths on the fact that the locals were not christians and said that the devil was doing it. They even brought a devil statue from Spain to show them. Ironically, the locals ended up praying to this devil and offering gifts to him to make him stop the killing. Even today every single mine contains a devil statue and the miners still believe in him and pray to him.

Looks Familiar?

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Imagine our surprise when a shoe-shining kid on the border asked us whether we wanted to buy this foreign money from him!