Potosi
We arrived and headed for dinner, hoping to find something that was open at 11:30pm. We walked around and the only places open were the funeral parlours and one Chinese restaurant that only sold rotisserie chicken. So, another meal of chicken and fries for dinner.
We tried to get into the museum in the morning, but it had more erratic opening hours than I had seen in Sucre. We waked around and I was pleasantly surprised. The movie had given me a very bad impression of a drab and dreary town, which it wasn´t. We stopped at the San Franciso church, paid our 15B and were escorted to the roof of the church by a policeman, then into the catacombs and the church. It had turned out to be a very pleasant visit.
The afternoon was dedicated to the mine visit. Our first stop was warehouse where we put on gumboots, trousers and jackets to cover our clothes and a hat. Next stop was the miners market to buy coca leaves (altitude is 4000m above sea level) and dynamite as gifts for the miners. A quick visit to the smelting plant and then to the mine, Cerro Rico. Health and safety standards would never allow a visit like this in Europe. It was very hot in the mine, the passages were low and it was horribly dusty. To get to the second level we were crawling though a tunnel, barely able to see through the dust. The dust was now burning our throats and we were struggling to breathe. I did have a moment of wanting to leave, but I stuck it out and made it to the third level where we saw a miner hammering holes in the wall for the dynamite. On the way back, we jumped out of the way of a wagon being pulled and pushed along tracks at quite a speed. We finally crawled our way back to the second and first level and were all very pleased to be in the fresh air. Our guide then decided to show us a dynamite explosion, so he lit some, we had 2 minutes and 40 seconds to pose for photos before it exploded. I was waiting for it but still got a fright when it happened.
Dinner was a quick sandwich on the street before Ryan and Kate headed to Argentina.
Gio and I had decided to take a day bus for a change as it would mean getting to Tupiza at a decent hour and not the 4am arrival like the night bus. So we left Potosi at 8:30am the next day. We got 10 minutes out of Potiso when we were stopped by the police. The road was closed. We had no idea why as we couldn´t understand the Spanish. All we got was that the road would be closed until 2:30pm. So we had to wait. We were able to buy some food from street vendors and it was only about 12:30 that we established there was a car rally on and that was why the road was closed.... on a TUESDAY. The traffic backed up all day. Finally, the cars and motor bikes came screeching around the corner, at 10 minute intervals. The first three cars were exciting, but we watched the rally until 4:30pm and it was boring. Finally, after 8 hours at the side of a road we were off to Tupiza.
It wasn´t long on the bus when it started to rain and like all over the world, drivers go mad in the rain. We narrowly missed a head-on collision with a jeep overtaking on the other side of the road. Our driver was flying down the road while chewing coca leaves. We finally made it to Tupiza and woke up a hostel at midnight to let us in.
