Blogs from Potosí Department, Bolivia, South America - page 149

Hi all, Wow! We´ve just done something today that will stay with us for a very long time. A visit to the co'operative mines just outside Potosi. Fascinating, scary, humbling and eye opening. More later.... So, we caught the overnight bus from La Paz to Potosi. A great experience mainly because it was so easy and comfortable. The bus ran on time, we had no problems, and each had a massive reclining seat. The only downer was having to sit through Rocky III in Spanish...but we both managed to doze through that... Potosi is brilliant. Its the highest city in the world, and its history is all about mining, the Spanish and silver. Legend has it that a native indian was caught up on the mountain one night, ánd noticed a shiny liquid within his fire. ... read more

I´m starting to be concerned about my impact on the road and rail infrastructure of Bolivia. Much as when I´m at work, I only need touch a computer and it will immediately freeze up, Bolivian Infrastructure seems to be doing an alarmingly similar thing as I use it. On the way to the world´s most dangerous road, I remember driving through a large crowd and not thinking much of it. We were told by the vehicle directly behind us (when they caught up later) that the crowd had closed the road off immediately behind us and they´d had to detour to find another way out of the city. We caught the 8:00am bus from La Paz to Oruru the next day, and found out afterwards that all buses after ours took hours to get out of ... read more

I left Salta a bit despondant - the people there had made such a difference, I didnt really like leaving, but these things have to be done, and i got on the bus. Everyone else was noticeably more indigenous than i'd seen so far. The bus was shitty - no foot rest and narrow chairs - all signs pointed to a bad nights sleep. Turns out i didnt have any sleep at all - just as i was managing to nod off properly this woman came and sat next to me and talked to me for ages. She told me she hated Germans and would never speak to them because they had 'bad blood running in their veins' after the second world war. Like Martin, the Quilmes guide, she had heard of England but didnt know ... read more

So we left the big smoke of La Paz - after fighting our way through a local fuel protest at the edge of the city and went to Potosi. Potosi is famous for being the highest city in the world at 4070 m above sea level so needless to say we got the altitude sickness yet again. It´s hard to imagine it when you are there, but it was also once the richest city in the world - they mine silver there and once made the coins for the whole of Spain and South America. We passed on the opportunity to see the local mine where children still work, and you have to take gifts of dynamite which they then blow up for you! Instead we took a 2 hour taxi ride to Sucre which is ... read more

The next day, I got a bus to the town of Potosí. This was actually my first “proper” bus in Bolivia and I had been dreading it as I had heard so many tales of people getting robbed. I can understand why a dirt-poor Bolivian would see my stuff and want to rob me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to happen! I’m travelling by myself so would be particularly stuffed if something did go missing. As my bag is too big for me to have it with me on the bus, I thought I’d experiment and buy a cloth shopping bag (like everyone uses round here), put into it the stuff that I could replace relatively easily if it got nicked into it, and put that on the roof of the bus. This ... read more