Advertisement
After visiting the railroad graveyard we drove to Potosi. It is the highest city in the world and there is a huge silver mine were since the beginning of 1900 over two million people died. There were organised mine tours, but not on Sunday! We checked out some pictures in the travel agency, after that we thought we just have to watch the movie and safe our lungs and life. The movie, “der teufelsberg” in german, gives an impression of the life of a 12 year old boy that works in the mine for three years. It was worth watching.
Potosi was once the richest city in south America, but the miners nowadays only earn 3-4 euro’s a day.
The road to Potosi is very beautiful and paved. Everywhere you see colourful Bolivians and lama’s with pink ribbons in their ears. In Sucre we saw Leander and Soumaya again. We celebrated Jura’s 30st birthday there in a nice cosy French restaurant and a beautiful colonial hotel. During our stay we enjoyed the relaxt ambiance in the city and we pimped our car. Bolivia is very cheap and for 50 dollars two guys work on the car for three days. Now it
looks almost brand new!
After Sucre we drove in the mountain peaks, with spectacular views. The road was bad and it took us 15 hours to get to Santa Cruz. Along the side off the road we saw many dogs waiting for someone throwing them a bone. We had a box with dog candies, that we threw out of the window to every dog we saw. It was good fun. Besides the dogs we also saw kids along the highway asking for money, that was pretty sad and not to mention dangerous. The rural area’s are very poor. We did not gave them anything because we did not want to encourage these kind of activities for kids, we would rather see the kids play or go to school and their parents along the road. It is difficult to judge about when you drive around with your 4x4. We gave money, food and cloth to other people in need, but not to kids. It just does not feel good. The last part of the road to Santa Cruz we went down to 1000 m, it was a welcoming chance after being in the dry altiplano for so long.
From Santa Cruz
we drove to the border with Brasil. On the way we got pulled over by the police. They found out that we did not have the proper customs papers for the car. We never got them because when we entered Bolivia through the desert we could not find the customs office, in their opinion the car was illegal and in a way this was true. We had to pay a “fine”, the first, of 5 euro’s. We love paying fines here, beside that the police was very nice. In Santiago de Chiquitos we visited a nice French guy and an American family that lived here for 30 years. There are many missions and very religious communities in the province of Chiquitos.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.096s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0487s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb