Having lounged around in La Paz for a couple of days, we decided to lounge around in some different cities and continued to the famous mining town of Potosí. The bus ride might have been one of the most uncomfortable ones yet; semi-cama, and as I was sitting right by the window my left side was freezing while my legs and right side were boiling since the heat was coming out right by my feet. Anyway, we arrived at 4:30 in the morning and when our taxi driver finally found our hostel we could catch up on some sleep.
Potosí, despite some nice old colonial buildings, wasn't overly charming. We're not sure why, but for some reason it didn't really... speak to us. So Alex, Moni and I decided to go the the cinema in the middle of the afternoon. The movie theater was cool, really old fashioned, but a tad uncomfortable and chilly. We saw a documentary about Evo Morales and his election campaign, called 'Cocalero'. Though we were already aware that he wasn't a huge fan of the American government (what sane person is?), we were a bit taken aback by the fact that one of his main campaigning slogans was 'Muerte a los Yanquis'.
The evening was a slack one too, with another movie and a half. We saw the last half of 'Motorcycle Diaries', which was cool since this time we'd actually been to some of the places they pass in the movie, and then' Requiem for a Dream' because we decided that we needed to sink into a deep depression before going to bed.
The next day we swerved down to Sucre, passing strange medieval/Disney castles and bridges on the way. We found Sucre a much more agreeable city to lounge around in than Potosí. We sat in the main park for quite a while and talked to some charismatic shoeshine boys and then took a walk, passing well-kept colonial buildings and churches that apparently are white-washed twice a year. We also passed quite a few posters saying 'La sede, sí se mueve' which was interesting as there had been a demonstration in La Paz when we were there where the slogan had been 'La sede, no se mueve'. There seems to be so much animosity between the two cities.
We spent the evening watching yet another movie, at a very cozy backpackery café. The movie was a documentary called 'The Devil's Miner', about a boy working in the Cerro Rico mines outside Potosí. It was extremely moving, I'm recommending it to everyone. Though a little downcast, we ended the night well by eating sushi a little further down the street (finally, some good Asian food!).
The next day we went back to Potosí where Charles and Alex took a tour of the mines. Apparently it was really cool, but Monica and I had decided a few days earlier that we weren't comfortable with the idea. The movie we watched in Sucre made us even more sure that we didn't want to gawk at people working in horrible conditions, so we mostly just hung out for the rest of the day (we did attempt to visit the Potosí CARE office, but they were busy with meetings until the next day, so unfortunately that didn't work out). In the evening we took the bus to Uyuni, where we are now. And what have we done today? Basically, nothing. However, tomorrow, we'll be off on a 3-day tour of Salar de Uyuni, staying at a hotel made out of salt, among other things. I'm excited about the tour, but I'm not much looking forward to the -10 degree nights. Luckily, I've done what every tourist has done and bought an Andean hat, so hopefully I'll survive. You might hear about it from San Pedro, Chile, where we'll be going if we make it through the cold.
