Potosi

Arrived in Potosi in the afternoon and had a wee walk around the city after dumping our stuff at the accomodation. Not a huge amount of interest, Potosi used be a very rich city and apparently in its prime it was the most populous city in the world.  However, now the mines aren’t as productive its fallen a bit to ruin. Some signs of what it once was though, grand buildings and crazy little streets. One interesting site was seeing a random tourist have a gigantic yak right in the middle of a pedestrian street, it went everywhere and was like a fire hose on full blast, unfortunately i missed the photo opportunity whilst too busy staring. Cerro Rico was a pretty dominating site sitting right on top of the town and was fairly impressive. Had the novelty of eating dinner ten stories up at a revolving restaurant which was great until the sun went down at it got stupidly cold. Again we experienced the pleasure of waiting an extraidonary length of time for our meals, reasonably certain Jesus didn’t go through the same ordeals we did, and was pretty glad to get the taxi back - although our guy run over a rock on the way down a dirt path and busted up his suspension so we limped home slowly. Went out for some cheeky dessert then hit the sack, although Corry claims to have burst an O-ring on his throne before that. Tour of the mines the next day, we had a fantastic guide, Choco, who picked us up and got us kitted out in gumboots, waterproof pants and jacket, and a helmet with a headlamp. Gee did that helmet save my bacon on a few occasions. First stop was the miners market, where we picked up juice, coca leaves, gloves and dynamite (which they will freely sell to anyone) to give to miners as gifts as we ran into them. Before entering the mines, Choco made us stuff our mouths with coca leaves, pretty ranksauce, but the real killer was having to do a shot of Bolivian 96% alcohol. Was electric blue and im pretty sure it was actually just plain meths. Burnt the throat something chronic – not sure why Choco thought it was a good idea, own entertainment maybe. Anthony Corry asked for a second though, gee that guy can sink his piss. Entering the mines, we immediately ran into a Tio (or devil) which is what the miners worship within the mountain, rather an inaspicious start. Choco used to be a miner himself so he knew all the nooks and crannies, went down to the second level of the mine through a range of tunnels and shafts, was pretty carny times and a great adventure. Casual arsenic all over the rocks and the navigational methods would probably be shut down fairly quickly back home. Towards the end Choco lit a couple of sticks of dynamite and gave them each to us to hold for what seemed in my opinion to be rather a while, pretty loose behaviour that, Corry was loving it though. He then threw them down a tunnel except only one blew up, huuuuuge explosion – again, very loose goose behaviour. Hopefully the other one (detonator failed) didnt blow up later and take someones head off but guess we will never know. Pretty hard work so we took the rest of the day lazily, ate two lunches then sat in bed watching movies for the night, not a lot going on in Potosi as I may have mentioned. Next morning was the public bus to Uyuni. Only 200km away but took 6 hours on account of combo of shitty bus, shitty roads, winding roads and general Bolivian inefficiencies which have all too common place.