Kris & Chris & The World

We are in Potosi - the highest city in the world!

Have just spent 3 days crusing around the Salar de Uyuni, the salt flats of Bolivia and surrounding areas. The salt flats are the most biazzare place I have been in my life. As far as you can see is salt, it looks like snow, it feels like snow but its salt!!!!!! And then in the middle is an old coral island with hundred of massive cacti growing everywhere. We also visited the salt hotel and as promised I licked the wall and surprise surprise, salty. We were travelling in 4 x 4s and they go hooning off and use the mountains in the distance for navigation as of course its just a big salt bed so there are no roads. We spent three nights in the area staying at hilarious little villages where all the buildings are brick, but if you know what door to know on you can buy beer and chocolate and of course coca cola (you cannot escape the multinational even on the Inca trail!) We spent one day with the salt and the rest crusing around even more bizzare volcanic landscape. There are different coloured laguna, green, blue, red, brown. And my most favourite thing PINK FLAMINGOS!!!! just walking around in front of you. I took about 50 photos of them, they are huge and surprisingly pink. I want to take one home. At one laguna there are 25000 of them at certain times of year. On the second night it was so cold that the water bottles in the car froze and we had to scrape ice of the inside of the windows. On this morning we visited a natual thermal bath (rotorua anyone?) at about 7:30am. the gound was frozen and it was so hard to take of the thermals and expose your bikini body to take a dip, but once in it was awesome and we were in there for about 30 minutes. But once you got out it was so cold that steam was rising off you.

We arrived in Potosi last night after a most horrendous bus trip that saw me squat to go to the toilet behind a hill when the bus stopped to help another bus, a small girl threw up in a bag in the aisle and then left the bag behind dangling from a seat, and the bus overheated stopped and then started rolling backwards down a hill. At this point i told chris i was no longer enjoying my south american experience!But its all good after a hot shower and a local beer!

This morning we visited the silver mines. Which was scary and heartbreaking. The mines are just a labryinth of tunnels and massive holes going straight into the ground. And you have to crawl around and hang onto the side of walls to not fall in the holes. We went really deep into the mines and at one point you haul yourself up an incline and then go feet first through a tiny hole to the next level. Also while we were there they were letting of dynamite so the rocks and your pants were shaking and you could hear the explosives booming away!

The miners are incredibly hard workers who have extremely trying condiditons so to cope they chew on huge wads of coca leaves and drink at alcohol that is 96%. At one point we met a miner who was only 12 years old. And i couldnt help but think oh my godness this is the rest of your life, staring at a black wall in a dark tunnel and your life expectancy is now only 20 years....we have no idea how fortunate we are.

But on a not so sombre note, we got to buy TNT and blow it up! Chris was the lucky one who was sent running down the side of the mountain with a bomb with a lit fuse. I was very scared until he came back!

Off to Surce tonight in taxis!!!! Taxis, isnt that just ridiculous. Imagine taking a taxi from hamilton to Auckland.....