Potosi - Santa Cruz

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After a very good night's sleep in the little hostel in Uyuni we were ready to hit the bumpy road to get ourselves to Potosi. The bus was very bareable (I for one slept most of the way) and we even got a free Coca Cola on board! We arrived in Potosi late afternoon and were pleasantly surprised by its quaint little streets and attractive buildings. Once we had found a hostel we went and booked a tour of the mines for the following morning and then had an early night after indulging in a four-course meal that cost us all of 3.50 pounds each! The cooperative mines were incredible but a little depressing at the same time. After being kitted out with a helmet, etc we went to the miner's market to buy them gifts consisting of fizzy drinks, dynamite and coca leaves, we were taken up 300m or so to where the mines are located and taken in. We then went 6 levels down in all, dropping around 60m into the mountain whilst going down steep ladders, carwling through small tunnels and climbing over frightingly large holes! It was pretty hard to breathe due to fairly low oxygen levels, let alone the altitude and as we visited different sections we handed out the gifts to the miners we passed who spend most of their daylight hours in there, some as young as 16, shifting at least 8 lots of 200kg piles of rubble a day! We heard the dynamite go off at 12 o'clock noon and were then taken to visit Tio, what they call the Devil who the miners worship as he is the ruler of the undergroung. The grand finale consisted of our guide, an ex-miner, blowing a load of stuff up outside with the dynamite we'd bought.

Within 2 hours we were on a bus to our next stop, Sucre. We dropped almost 2000m in the 3 hours bus journey so it was considerably warmer there. We lodged up in the same hostel as our friends were in, one that was very pleasant but run by trhe Bolivian Adams Family. It's a beautiful colonial city, one we were more than happy to spend a few days wandering around in, indulging in the cheap food and colourful market. From the Thursday night there were quite a few parties going on celebrating 200 years of Sucre, so we enjoyed a lot of drinking and dancing for a good few days too! We also visited The Cretaceous Park that was advertised, taking a Dinotruck from the main plaza up to a quarry where dinosaur footprints were discovered. Unfortunately it was a huge disappointment, and other than the miniscule footprints we could make out from a distance, we only saw a load of plastic statues!

We left Sucre on Sunday, having booked our first night bus in Bolivia. It cost us about 9 pounds each....what a bargain! Little did we know until arrival at the bus station is that it should of been 5 pounds, and the bus was older than the dinosaur footprints! The high standards set by the Argentine buses need to be scrapped.It wasn't a bad bus ride, with only one little breakdown in the whole 14 hours. Unfortunately it didn't lend itself so well to Chris who was carsick most of the way. We finally arived in Santa Curz yesterday morning and with there being little to do here have so far enjoyed the warmer climate (it being only around 400m above sea level)and caught up on sleep. In the next few hours we are setting off to a nearby village called Samaipata to do some trekking and camping for a few days.

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