You lucky lucky people, here we are again to regale you with more travelling stories. We headed from La Paz to Samaipata, gorgeous little village outside Santa Cruz (Bolivias largest city). Bit of a chance to chill out off the standard gringo trail. Highlights included meeting a cuban american called Mario who informed us that all black africans are descended from Noah (they went black to cope with the sun in africa dont you know) (Ness refrained from asking him why the Chinese had different eyes (squinting from the sun perhaps?????????). Unbelievable.
Lots of books were read and lots of time was spent at poolside (sod this budget travelling). We also had a very random visit to an injured animal refuge and had monkeys draped all over us.
We then fell victim once more to the vagaries of South American travel when we arrived at the airport in Santa Cruz for the flight we had booked just 4 days previously to be told that both the location and the time of the flight had been changed (it had just left from the military airport when we attempted to check in at the civilian airport). Helpful as ever the staff told us that there were seats on the next available flight (three days later).
Yet another overnight bus ride ensued which meant that all we saw of the UNESCO world heritage site city of Sucre was the bus station (we are both pretty convinced that this was not the reason the city was granted world heritage status).
Potosi was the next stop, a truly memorable city where a mountain has been mined constantly for the last 500 years (over 8 million have died extracting minerals from its core - most indian and black slaves sent there in the 1600 and 1700s. It was once the richest city in the world and larger than London and Paris. there are still 15000 miners working in the mountain under the most unbelievable conditions - it was truly humbling to visit the mines and see the conditions they worked in.
A somewhat serendipitous occurence was that we were there for the anniversary celebrations of Potosi - this seemed to mostly involve incredible amounts of boozing and incredible amounts of marching (including somehwat worryingly a lot of goose stepping) plus associated bands.
Just arrived in Uyuni - off for a four day tour of the salt flats (including a night in a hotel made of salt) - should be interesting.
Happy working girls and boys - it will no doubt cheer you all up no end to know that a month tomorrow me and ness will be back at our desks (boo hoo)
