Anyway, I suppose I should continue retelling our adventures, starting from Potosi. Now Potosi is a very high city, even higher than La Paz! So, with Ruby´s history of altidude sickness, which you have all heard a lot about by now, she was sadly extremely ill, and spent most of the two days we spent there in bed glued to the warner brothers channel. However, I was able to do some sight seeing for the both of us, which I can tell you about now.
Before we left sucre, we went to the famous joyride cafe (we spent a lot of time there actually, they had really delicious coffee and hashbrowns) to watch a documentary about the silver mines of Potosi. It was called ¨The Devil´s Miner¨, and it is about this 14 year old boy called Basillio who has to work in the silver mines in order to support his mother little brother and sister. It was such a sad story, as silver mining, although it pays well, is probably the worst job you can have as a local living in Potosi; the conditions are terribly dangerous, their life expectancy is only around 35 to 45, and they sometimes have to work 24 hour shifts. These are horrible conditions for an adult to work in, so the fact that children also have to do this so that their family can keep their tiny houses on the side of the mountain and put food on the table broke my heart. Still it was a brilliant documentary and I highly reccomend you see it if youre into that sort of thing.
When we arrived in Potosi, most of the group was keen to go on a tour down the mine, including Ruby, although she decided that with her current sickness going underground where there was even less air to breath was not the smartest idea shes ever had (although she did do the inka trail haha). I was not interested in doing it at all, as I am not a fan of small spaces at the best of times. So we decided to spend the morning at the "Best Museum in South America". Now Im a bit of a fan of museums, so with a description like this, how could I pass it up? It actually was a great museum, which was converted from the old mint; they had paintings, exhibits of the first silver coins made right there in potosi, and the equipment used to make it, as well as a geology wing filled with pretty crystals and mineral deposits, and even mummies of spanish children, still wearing all their clothes, some of them even had hair. We found out later that they had been naturally mummified by the minerals in the ground surrounding the church they were buried in. I thought that was pretty cool.
Now in the afternoon we did what was probably the highlight of my visit to Potosi. Lupe, who is our new tour guide by the way, took us to visit the families of the miners who lived on the side of the mountain where the largest mine is set up. We took with us rice, noodles, lentils powdered milk,and apples for the children, which we had bought from the market that morning. They were such lovely people with such strong spirits, it felt so good to see how happy they were with our gifts and the fact that we had come to see them. There was this one family in particular that I fel in love with, this amazing woman called Amelia and her 7 children, they were all so lovely. I will never forget that afternoon.
The next day it was time to leave Potosi, much to Ruby´s delight, for Uyuni. This is a little Bolivian town on the edge of the Salt Lakes which has the BEST PIZZA EVER! Oh it was so good, and so cheap! We spent the evening eating Pizza and buying toys to take to the Salt flats- yes, that does sound a little odd, but stay with me, I shall explain later.
The next day we began our Salt Flats tour, which turned out to be pretty much my favourite part of Bolivia. With just a backpack of clothes each we all piled into three landrovers and set off for flats at around 11 in the morning, nice and chilled. We decided to go with a girls car, which had me, Ruby, Lauren and Steph, Emma and Vicky, and we had a great time for, much to our drivers dismay, we were able to plug in our I pods to the car radio. We started off with a bit of 90s pop (you know, the stuff you listened to when you were 12 year old girl. Trust me, its a strange and confusing place to revisit, especially if you were never a girl to begin with). On the first day, we visited the train graveyard first, which aparently is the same train line Butch Cassidy used to rob in his Sundance Kid hay days,before reaching the Salt flats around midday. It really is an amazing place, just planes of which that stretch on for miles, and you can the see the horizon so the mountains look like they are emerging from the sky. I loved it. We did lots of silly things here; Ruby and Steph had salt fights, which hurt a lot more than snow balls they discovered, we went hunting for crystals underneath the planes of salt, and took lots of crazy photos of our toys and ourselves(which are postest below). My personal favourite is the attack of the gingers. We also had a bit of a dance party on the flats while the sun was going down, courtesy of Snoop Dog (apparently I should drop it like its hot? Not sure what that means but I´m not going to argue with Snoop). It was a lot of fun.
We finished this action packed day at our hotel made, thats right, of salt! it was really cool actually, I had to stop Ruby from trying to lick the walls. Would have been nice if we had some tequila! Instead, there was red wine, and dinner was delicious courtesy of our travelling cook, Dora, and yes, she is an explorer :) We also set off some fireworks that Tim had bought from the black market in La Paz, yet sadly there were no churches around. It was still cool thought.
The next day involved a lot more walking and a lot less silliness; we were all pretty tired having to get up at 5 and all :( and man it gets COLD out there! we visited some underground tombs, a cave of stalictites that look like lace, lakes full of flamingos, which was really cool to see in person (animal science nerdgasm)an island full of cacti and the great red lake, which was my favourite part of the day; the sulfer had made the algae grow profusley so the lake was a rainbow of colour, and full of more flamingos (yay) and surrounded by llamas. It was really really pretty :). Our next place we stayed was a dorm room, so all us girls from the car and lupe shared, which fun, kinda like a sleepover, but we were in bed pretty early cos the next day we had to get up at 4 :( :( it was SO COLD!!!!! but it was totally worth it, cos we went to visit the natural geizers and mud springs (similar to those in rotarua, but much cooler in my opinion, sorry kiwis), as the sun was rising, and we finished getting all warmed up in a natural hot spiring, which was just bliss! it was so lovely, I really enjoyed that morning, minus the whole early start thing. After that we went and visited the Salvador Dali desert, the place where he spent three months trying to capture all the colours of the desert.
One moment, Sorry...I need to take a second, Im sitting in this really cool hippy-run hostel, and Octopuses Garden just came on the cd player...I need to take a little awkward dance break.
Ok, thats better :) thanks for your patience.
So yes, Dali did a great job of capturing the desert, you know being a great artist and all, but its nothing like seeing the real thing, theyre just as vivid as you can imagine!
We also visited the green lake, another sulfur induced algae swarm that made for many pretty colours! It was then time to trek all the way back to Uyuni, which we were xcited for because it meant more AWESOME PIZZA!!! it was a really great three days though, we had so much fun.
No sleep for the wicked though! When we got back, we had to take a train ride at 2 in the morning to get to Tupiza, which is just outside the Bolivian Argentinian border, where we would be stopping for the day before crossing over into Argentina. Most of us tried to stay up so that we could sleep on the train, yet that proved to be a very silly idea because the train ride was really very awful; most of us were put on bench seats (no reclining) surrounded by locals standing and sleeping in the ilses, no leg room and the lights on all night. All I can say is that this is the only part of the tour so far I really did not like, it was just bad. But it couldnt be helped and we made it to Tupiza in one frazzeled peace. Luckiliy there is aboslutely nothing to do there, so we just slept for most of the day, which was bliss!
The next day we crossed the border into Aregentina, which I shall begin to tell you about in my next blog post which will soon follow this one, I just need to give my fingers and you poor brains a little break so you are not overloaded with information. The border crossing was uneventful, expcept for a rude group of french boys (who would have thought?) who tried to push in after we had been waiting there for three hours. Needless to say, they felt the ginger wrath....not from me though, from our other resident ginger lauren. I was not happy either though.
But yes, I hope you have all had a wonderful christmas with lots of love and family, and I shall talk to you again before the new year.
Lots of Love
Sally xoxoxoxo
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