Monday 1st November
The 3 hour journey to Potosi from Sucre is wonderful as you travel through very high mountains. The coach was old, very little sitting room and packed. The approach to Potosi is fantastic if you are a fan of open cast mining but total shite if you are not. 95% of Potosi is like this and the 5% downtown is really lovely with lots of old churches and buildings. Like La Paz, Potosi is on a steep slope.
We were offered lunch on the street by two old biddies and went up to the second floor. We were the only customers, tele on. Our 4 course lunch cost GBP1.50 and we were not offered a drink! It was so cold that we went back to the HI Hotel to get the water and wind proofs. Did I mention that we are Hostelling International members. Discount of 10% at any HI establishment. We wandered around and managed to get a machine coffee on the square and it was good.
There are four bus stations in Potosi. Buenos Aires, population 15 million, has one.To find out where the bus station was for Uyuni, our next stop, we walked there using a very dodgy map provided by the hotel. Having got to the bus station, same quality as Valparaiso bus station for crime probability, we were informed that although we had purchased and paid for a ticket for the next day (in Sucre after a phone call), we would not be going anywhere the next day because it was a holiday and no buses were running. I was mildly displeased with this news as it also meant that we would lose the money for the next nights hostel, booked in advance.
Being hardy travellers we saaid "ho, hum" and booked the bus for the following day, rebooked our hotel in Potosi for another night and rebooked the hostal in Uyuni. The weather promises to be warmer tomorrow. It needs to be because it is bloody cold here right now.
Potosi claims to have the highest brewery in the world and proudly says so on all of its beer products, which are OK, by the way. The fact that the new brewery in El Alto (La Paz) sits at 4167 metres asl ,100 metres higher than Potosi, seems to have escaped their attention.
In the Copa de Libertadores (South American equivalent to the European Cup) teams do not like playing in Potosi because the lowland teams have no time to get acclimatised to the altitude and very few if any get a result there.
Whereas you can read about the silver mines in Potosi, and the town is still dominated by the hill where the mines are, a couple of facts still amaze. It is estimated that 8,000,000 (yes 8 million) slaves died while mining silver. Miners today have a life expectancy of 39 years in the silver mines. If you take a tour to the mines ( at your own risk, no insurance) you are offered a stick of dynamite to light and explode. Mind numbing!
http://www.google.com.ar/images?hl=es&q=potosi+bolivia&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=hm3mTOPLHo-t8Abxg-nIDA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CD8QsAQwAw&biw=1427&bih=663
Tuesday 2nd November
It is warmer in Potosi today and it is All Souls Day, a national holiday so everything is closed. We wandered around, having another coffee at the cafe on the square ( only travellers, no locals) and I spent far too long in an Internet cafe getting the blog up to date. We took dinner at a nice restaurant recommended by an English guy that we kept bumping into. Most restaurants were closed.
We can walk in Potosi, no problem, but I find that I still puff in the mornings. We need to buy water and lunch for the bus trip to Uyuni (6 1/2 hours tomorrow).
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