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Published: November 7th 2009
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Potosi is the highest city in the world at an altitude of 4020m above sea level. It also has a working silver mine in the mountain of Cerra Rica (rich mountain).but we decided not to go down the mines where we could potentially get asbestosis or inhale any number of other poisons. Instead we went to watcha film called The Devil´s Miner in Sucre. It is a documentary about a 14 year old boy who works down the mines to suppport his family as he has no father, his ambition is to get out of the mines and get an education. it was hard-hitting and very incitful! Inside the mine they have a god called Tio who they make offerings of coca or alcohol to and he protects them from harm. The miners fear him and think that God cannot reach inside the mines to protect them. The mines are wuite harrowing and the miners will all die young from silicosis or asbestosis. It is very sad.
We were in Sucre for a week, the capital of Bolivia (but not if you look in any guide books, strangely...) It is often thought that La Paz is the capital because it
is the business and financial capital. Sucre is very pretty with whitewashed buildings and clean streets. We visited a museum about the different weave patterns of the different tribes around Bolivia and that evening went to a dance show called Origenel where dancers danced different tribes rituals such as courting or taking the mick out of some of the Spanish customs such as bull fighting. Tracey and I had Spanish Lessons there though we are still practicing and learning all the time and we had lots of jokes about going on dates with some Bolivian men to practise! Whist in Sucre we decided we were very unfit and went for a couple of walks up hill to ´practise´for the inca trail. Unfortunately up this particular hill is a lovely cafe for lunch so I´m not sure how much help it was all in all. A couple of the guys from our Salt Falt tour, Jimmy, Tommy and Asher, were also in Sucre so we me them in the evenign for some drinks and went dancing, it was a lot of fun, mostly because when they turned up they were drunk so were very entertaining for the rest of the evening!
One evening we went to play a game called Walley Ball with people from our Spanish School. It is very like volley ball but played in a squash court and we were rubbish at it! It was still a lot of fun though, despite the injuries from being run into, getting the ball at a funny angle, or hitting the wall!
We also visited the Casa De la Libertad because recently Bolivia celebrated 200 years of independence and we went to see if we could spot the president that our tour guide on the Salt flats had said Jared looked like. We didn´t really find him though.
Also went to see some dinosaur footprints just outside Sucre. There were loads of them and it is the most important site for dino prints in South America. Hopefully some of the photos came out ok.
Next was a bus to La Paz which took out 10 blocks of electricity when it snapped the cable with the roof vent it had got caught on. It was quite funny for us except that we then had to wait an hour by the side of the road while the driver spoke to the police
etc. In La Paz I went to mass where they did a song I know for a change! Then had delicious food at the hostel before playing a pub quiz that, had it not been for Jimmy knowing everything, we would have done appalingly. Jimmy and Tommy were at our hostel by pure coinsidence! I ´found them´that morning when we arrived. Anyway we ended up winning a bottle of coca liquour which is horrible tasting stuff so we went round tryign to get rid of it!
We did quite a bit of relacing in La Paz: we watched films we went for English food at a place called Olivers and Indian food at the highest curry house in the world where Tracey had LLama Tikka Masala.
Went to visit Tiwanaku, some ruins outside La Paz with Jimmy and Tommy. It turned out to be a long bus ride but we found things to talk about, too many things if you ask the boys (apperently we talk too much!). The ruins are quite impressive and they are still extracting copper from the area. We got to see most of the ruins before a sandstorm came! It was very painful havign sand
smack against your skin and between that and the fact that we were completely inappopriately dressed in shorts and t-shirts because it was sunny when we left La Paz. We waited it out and got in an extremely overcrowded bus where Tracey and I in particular were completely squished!
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The next thing we did was fly to Rurrenabaque in North Bolivia to visit the Jungle lowlands called the Pampas. It is a very small plane that seats 19 people and lands on a grass run way. On arrival the first thing you notice is the heat and humidity. As our tour started the next day this gave us some time to adjust and to have a fun day and evening in Rurrenabaque. The next day we got driven to the river where a boat collected us and our tour guide Luis showed all the flora and fauna surrounding the river including the many many many animals and birds that we saw, including paradise birds, fishing eagles, yellow monkeys, turtles, alligators. In the evening we went to watch the sun set over the pampas it was very relaxing apart from the mosquitoes who were out to get you.
On the second day we went on an extemely hot and not very enjoyable walk around to try and spot some anacondas. The three of us agreed that even though we did see anacondas it would have been more enjoyable to spot other kinds of wildlife too and not have to walk for 4 hours in the blistering heat. The day did get better though as we went swimming in the river with pink dolphins, with an aligator watching us from the bank... and watched the sun set again before going back in the boat whilst looking for aligator eyes with torches. They look red in the dark. Very evil looking.
On day 3 we didnt´t get up to see the sun rise concluding that we had seen the sun rise quite a bit on the salt flat tour and we had watched it set 2 days in a row. Also we were feeling lazy. We went pirhana fishing but all I caught were sardines. Franki was master fisher, which was funny because she doesn´t like fish and her technique turned out to be running away from a wasp with her line in the water and catch a
pirhana! Luis also got bitten by one which sounds painful and looked it too, but he was still very happy to pose for photos with the pirhana and his bleeding finger!
That evening we had a lovely dinner with a few people from our tour group and the next day our flight left on time! Yay!
Back in La Paz we had the day to kill because we were leaving that afternoon on a bus bound for Peru so we visited the Cathedral and the government buildings and went to see the outside of the infamous San Pedro Prison and got told off for taking photographs, oops. Our bus out wasn´t quite to the standard we had been promised but it was comfortable enough. When we got to Lake Titicaca we were told to get off the bus and get a boat across and our bus did the same - went across on a boat. The border crossing was fine and we found a friendly man at the bus station in Puno, Peru to book us a tour of Lake Titicaca, set us up with a nice hostel and go and get us take away pizza! Very nice
of him!
Having the most amazing time and I will blog again soon as I am very behind...!
Love Jen xxxxxx
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dianne roberts
non-member comment
Fotos at last!
Hello darling, how wonderful to see your foto at last and see you alive, and well and in exotic places! Makes it seem more real to us here in boring old UK! It sounds like you are having a fab time, meeting all sorts of people, as well as wild life and weather conditions! Relaxing on a Bus? looks like a luxury flight?! I thought the buses were rickety old things full of chickens and smelly people?! will ring you soon, lotsa love, Mummy xxx