Day 160 - Sucre to Potosi
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
161
243
Trip End
May 01, 2008
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Potosi,
Bolivia
Saturday, February 9, 2008
We woke up sad to be leaving Sucre, which we've both come to really like, it's probably the most attractive, cleanest and least hectic place we've been to in Bolivia.
You can see why so many ex-pats choose to live here...
The first thing we did today was walk up a big hill to get to a nice church with great views over the city.
The church was pretty, the views even better and for the first time we could see why some people compare Sucre to Florence.
Ok, you might have to use your imagination ;)
As we walked around the square we noticed a local band filming a video in the middle of it. Their lip-syncing was terrible, but we enjoyed watching them nonetheless.
We then noticed a small cafe just off the square nestled at the top of the hillside and ordered some (relatively expensive) breakfast.
Despite the high price it ended up being good value because the volume of food brought to us verged on the ridiculous!
Katie ordered the "American" breakfast, and was delivered the following: vegetable salad, fruit salad, bread rolls, sliced bread, toast, butter & jam, yoghurt and eggs!
My pancakes looked a bit pathetic by comparison, although they were laced with an unidentified spirit which certainly applied a bit of a kick!
Katie LOVED the view up here, I almost had to drag her away, she could have sat up there all day...
On the way back into town we passed a big painting of Simon Bolivar, the man who liberated Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and I think Chile from the Spanish.
He must have been one hell of a guy.
As we walked back through the streets we were a bit sad, we knew that nowhere else in Bolivia would be able to compete with the simple honest charm of Sucre.
Sucre is also famous for its chocolate, so we bought a selection box (24 for 25 BVs or about £2/$4), and couldn't resist trying a few on the way back to the hotel! They were heavenly.
I did have a photo of Katie eating some choccies outside the shop, but she deemed the photo so "horendous" that I was forced to delete it on the spot! ;)
We checked-out of our hotel, jumped in a taxi and headed for the unquestionable madness of another Bolivian bus station.
Sure enough, it didn't disappoint.
The lady on the desk of our bus company could almost be described as being "openly hostile"!
I tried a few times to get some information from her (eg. what gate? on time? leave bags here or take to the bus?) before eventually giving up and leaving with an extraordinary urge to 'accidentally' shove the desk she was leaning on somewhere rather uncomfortable.
Our 3pm departure came and went, with no sign of our 'top class' local bus (we'd paid a bit more to use a good company with good buses), so Katie ventured upstairs to the desk, mainly to avoid me committing murder.
Luckily there was a bloke there who was almost helpful, explaining that they'd moved us onto another bus, which wouldn´t leave until 3:30pm! (It was just as well they hadn't moved us to one of the 3pm buses that had just left!)
This meant that after paying a premium to avoid one of the shitty buses, we were going to be boarding the Mother of all shit buses. Tremendous.
The only thing good about it was its name: Raul's Megabus!
Once aboard (late), the bus was actually ok, fairly comfy, at least until the dude in front of Katie fully reclined his seat onto her shins, which made her swear out loud and thump the back of his seat in a VERY mature gesture of displeasure!
The engine left rather a lot to be desired, however.
Let's just say that when we were an hour from Potosi the 4pm bus from Sucre overtook us as we crawled up a hill!
Needless to say, the "3 hr" journey actually took us over 4 hrs, so we managed to arrive nearly 2 hrs after we should have done, had we been able to get on the bus that we'd actually PAID FOR!.
The road to Potosi was interesting, mainly because we climbed about 2,000m to reach over 4,000m.
Potosi is famous for being "the highest city in the world", but personally I think that after walking around it, the description "city" is somewhat misleading!
When we arrived in our next chapter of "The World's Worst Bus Stations", we jumped into a waiting taxi and headed to The Koala Hut, an overpriced hostel, but which offered good tour trips to the silver & mineral mines for which Potosi is world famous. Apparently.
No, I'd never heard of it either until a few days ago ;)
At one point in the late 18th Century, Potosi was more populated and more wealthy than any other city in the world, including London or Paris!
The huge silver deposits found in the local mountains attracted hundreds of thousands of prospectors from all around the world, and the silver that was extracted and solf funded most of the Spanish conquest of South America. Impressive stuff.
I guess that's the main reason why I instantly found Potosi such a charming little place.
It has some wonderful buildings and squares, despite having the overall appearance of a shanty town.
It's like a beautiful old town which has hit harder times, which is essentially exactly what it is.
We booked our mine tour ("you don´t know Potosi until you go into the mines" quote, unquote) for Monday, because none of the miners work Sundays.
I can't say that I was looking forward to it, but all the books said that it's one of those things that you really have to do once in your life, even if you will probably hate every second of it.
Thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of people have died in or as a result of working in the Potosi mines over the years, most of them African slaves forced to work their by the Spanish under intollerable conditions.
The mine shafts themselves are often extremely narrow, very deep, and full of both dust and noxious gases. The average life expectancy for a Potosi mine worker is 42 years of age, before which they die a pretty horrible death.
Apparently no-one 'enjoys' the 3 hour scramble around inside the Potosi mines, but everyone leaves with an incredible respect for the miners that still work in the insufferable conditions.
Even in 2008, 40 miners die in these mines every year, which is something they don't tell you until you FINISH the mine tour! (See Day 162 for full details of the tour)
After booking the mine tour we decided to try a few restaurants for dinner, eventually settling on a charming little place just off the main square, which looks a little something like this.
Cute eh?
The service in the restaurant was as abysmal as usual in Bolivia, although this bloke pretty much wrote the book on diabolical service.
At one point Katie was so stunned by his rudeness (after he turned his back on us, mid-order and took some plates off another table which was empty) that she asked me, loudly, "WHAT THE HELL IS HIS PROBLEM?!" ;)
Thankfully the food was excellent, as were the large draught beers.
I challenge anyone, anywhere, to find a better value steak than my 35 Bvs (just over £2/$4) chateaubriand monster, which was wrapped in bacon and accompanied with fries and vegetables.
It was fantastically, absolutely, extraordinarily, astonishingly delicious.
After that we walked home, found a movie channel and had a most pleasant end to our long day.
Lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
