So we got up early, paid our bill and went out to get a taxi. After standing around for a few minutes a taxi stopped and we piled our stuff in the fromt seat and got in – most Andean Bolivian taxi drivers don't like us to use their boot. He drove for what seemed like far longer than he should have and we startyed to worry that my attempts to explain, in Spanish, where we were going may have been mistranslated so that instead of taking us to the bus station where the buses to Potosi go, he may have been taking us all the way to Potosi... He then just stopped by a garage and said we were here. We got out, were very pleased to be charged 80p for the journey, then tried to find the bus station. After a couple of failed attempt we got to the bus station and someone took our bags off us. Bindya was somewhat worried by this, as the guidebook says never to let anyone do this. I was like, 'It's OK, we got a little ticket in exchange'... We wondered around for a bit but eventually found the way down to the buses and tried to go through the gate. It turned out that we had to pay a 'Bus station tax' to get to our bus – only 25p each, but still...
We stood outside, determined that we weren't going to get on our bus until we saw our bags being put on. After a short while we saw a chair being dropped down from the building above us on the end of a long rope. Someone else took the chair and tied it to the top of a taxi before getting more stuff the same way. I jokingly said to Bindya, 'I bet that's how our bags will get here..'. Next thing we knew there was a loud crash as my bag hit the floor – it had been tied to a rope but was obviously a bit heavy... Anyway, happy that our bags had been loaded we got on the bus to be hit by a very solid stench of, what I thought was vomit, but Bindya says she had not experienced such a smell before. We took our seats and the bus headed off after the driver sprayed air-freshener down the bus (now it smelt of vomit and lavender).
More people kept being picked up as we headed out of town, including one bloke who then just stood in the middle of the bus and started talking very loudly. We weren't sure what was going on – salesman, preacher? - but after it bit it was clear that he was trying to sell some sort of dietary supplement. He talked for a good 40 mins or so, then just got off the bus in the middle of nowhere. After that, they put a DVD on – it was a fairly posh bus... - The Dirty Dozen – The Next Mission. These Bolivians love their Nazi themed films. I half watched that, half dozed but mainly watched the scenery. At one point (the only bit that scared me) we drove slowly up the side of a massive canyon – it must have been at least 150-200 m deep, then, at the top, the land just spread out flat as far as we could see. Even then, we continued to climb.
Ok I going to keep this short and snappy. We got there, it didnt look like a bus terminal at all, but as everyone else got off so did we. We headed up the road and hailed a cab, again not letting us put our stuff in the boot. The taxi driver drove us to a Hostel (It was one we had not booked but thought we would see if they have any rooms). During the journey I soon realised Potosi was a place I had not seen before in Bolivia, it was dusty, high, clearly poor even though it used to be the richest city in the world. BTW what was funny was the taxi man trying to not run over a drunk in the middle of the road...clearly alcohol and altitude do not mix...I thought this was how Neil may look at some point of our time here. We arrived at the hostel, got a room, not sure how much it cost as we couldn work out all the Spainish the women was saying.
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| Potosi and Cerro Rico (The mountain you fools) |
Got a room, high up, takes the breath out of you, nice place it was a monastry before a hostel. Lots of blankets but no heating as that is a REAL luxury. Anyway we dumped our stuff and headed out to eat as we had not eaten all day. Found a place recommened by the guidebook. No one in but we ate there. Neil was fascinated by the stuff in the room so he can explain....
It was called Cafe Kultural or something. I think it was probably closed but that didn't matter. We ordered veg omelettes. There was just some really great stuff on the wall. Amid the christmas decorations there was a childs representation of the passion of christ in clay. There was a fantastic thing made out of metal that represented the miners in the mountain and some pictures of Potosi during different weather conditions – the most spectacular being a view of the city, totally hidden by cloud, with just the mountain, The Cerro Rico, poking out. This is a very beautiful mountain – it totally dominates the city, is very triangular and is almost multicoloured due to all the different minerals it is composed of.
We walked around town, very slowly due to the altitude being 4070 metres, it is the highest city so we were trying not to get alitutude sickness. The town is a mix of amazing architecture that shows off its colonial and rich past and then very poorly construted mix of buildings which show it poor state now. The entrance of the tourist information was amazing...it almost looked like a highly carved and decorative temple you would find in India.
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| Not India...its the tourist information centre |
Here in Bolivia it seems all the women do all the work, they sell stuff, cook, clean, run hostels and also repave roads. With no machinary they break up the road and pick up the large concrete slabs in the hot sun. The road looked fine to me and Neil. It is strange here the weather in the day is about 20 degrees but at night can drop below 0 even reach -25.
After a short but tiring walk we went back to the hostel for a kip. Got up and headed out for dinner, we went to a place again suggested by ther guidebook called 4060. We had Pizza and sandwiches and then headed home as we were still tired.
We both read the twlight trilogy and I finsihed Eclipse. If you are a fan or read the books me thoughts on it are I hate Bella, Edward is annoying and I am on Team Jacob! Neil also finds Bella annoying and we both tend to shout out as we read, manly about how much Bella annoys us.
PS....No heating, very cold but we have about 6 blankets and their seem to be the heaviest in the world that I cant move.
11th September
Today we got up very late, got ready and headed out into town. Got breakfast (actually lunch) in a small place. Then decided to sort out the next part of out trip..which is a bus to Uyuni and get a tour to the Salt Flats. We went to an internet cafe..cheap way to spend some time and orgainse next place to sleep and research into tours as there are 80 in the town and no-one seems to tells us which are the best ones to use.
Then did some more sightseeing fo the town, more churches, markets and soaked up the place. We then decided to buy gloves and hats for the salt flats as it gets very cold out there!!! Neil bought warm but I think a little boring black gloves and hat, where as I bought an Alpaca gloves – cute as they are half gloves and half mittens and a Llama hat..it looks stupid but keeps me warm. I sure you will see pictures of me in this in the next installment for the blog.
At 4.30 we headed to the museum which is based in the old mint house – Casa Nacional de la Moneda. It had free guided tours so we got separated into English speaking and Spanish speaking – there were only 2 of us Ingles ones... Our guide came over and at first I thought it was going to be like the Dino tour but I concentrated and he was very informative – later on he warmed up more and started cracking little jokes. We first got to see loads of paintings, one in particular kind of summed up the whole history of the town and the importance of the mountain.
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| Me getting a bit Edmonton Gangster at the Museum |
BYW – I thought the tour guide looked like Quentin the guy who used to be in Top Gear and now does Britain's worst shows.
The tour was really informative so am now going to bore you with some interesting facts we leant on the tour....
1. The local Indians never mined the mountain due to it's mystical significance until one day a Llama herder got lost looking for a Llama. He set up camp for the night, starting a fire to keep warm. In the morning, he woke to find that the rocks next to him had produced lines of silver. He secretely mined some of the ore for himself and his brother until his bro stupidly went and told some of the Spaniards – that kind of messed things up for the local Indians from that point on...
2. The Indians did not mine the moutain as God had told them to leave it for the others who were to come...apparently
3. Potosi then became the richest city in the world with more inhabitants then London or Paris at that time
4. The name, Potosi, was derived from the Quechan word for 'Explosion' – I can't quite remember why...
5. They began to makes silver coins by hand at first, them due to technology they began pressing them. However the old way only took 2 people to do 1 coin and the new way took 4 mules and 6 people to make one coin.
6. Coins minted here were shipped all over the world – many of these ships lost, as was the way at that time. One was found in the 50s and was found to contain treasure worth almost half a million US dollars. Our guide was slightly bitter as he told us that the Americans 'kindly' sent one of the coins to his museum.
7. Coins were carried in safeboxes and these were amazingly complicated locking devices, where they places a false lock on the front to deter English, Dutch and French Pirates but actually their were 12 bolts around the box each had a special key which was not used like a key we would use. It was twice to the left and one to the right to open them. If you tried doing it the way we do now it was almost impossible to open.In some cases the boxes has hidden locks that had different keys, all held by different people in different places. If you did want to open this you had to do it simultaneously. It was amazing and me and Neil were excited by this. Our tour guide said that even Jack Sparrow would have trouble with this and we all laughed.
8. They even made these mechanisms out of silver as they had so much of the flipping stuff.
9. People and I mean regular people of Potoski had sliver purses (I want one), hair clips, suits of armour, religious arifacts and even bed pans made out of sliver. The guide at this point said “Excuse me for me phrasing but we had enough silver to even have silver shit” sorry for the swearing folks but I didnt say it.
10. They had the roller machines imported from Spain – it took 14 months to bring them over and they are the only existing example of their kind in the world.
11. Thry had a collection of minerals from all over the Americas, it had a huge, beautiful mineral called Amerite (a mixture of amethyst and citrite) It is only found in Bolivia and Neil liked the exhibition, I even got Sciencey as I could even tell what was what from the periodic symbols...look at me Wanda!
12. There were some mummies – tiny ones. I didn't like them as they were babies and looked sad and slightly scary
13. I wanted to ask a question about this face we keep seeing everywhere in the town and is in the courtyard as you enter the museum. But before I could ask he explained that no one actually knew who it was or why it was there. There are a few theories...one being it was the Inca god, two the orginal guy who found the silver in the mountain and the last one being it was a cartoon of the head of adminstration there and the artist hated him.
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| Funny Face Important to Potosi - and a big mask... |
We left, went home, put on warm clothes, headed into town for drinks, blog writing and dinner.
