Sunday, June 29

Due to the roadblocks around the mining town Potosi we weren't sure whether we could reach the city or not. We decided to simply go and see what would happen. The taxi company told us there were road blocks but it would be an easy 1 kilometer walk around them. This 1 Bolivian kilometer turned out to be 20 'normal' kilometers! We first had to walk for an hour (at almost 4000 meters high, all our luggage...) and then we were lucky to catch a ride from a guy who wanted to make some money and was willing to drive us to the next roadblock. From there we had to walk for another hour before we reached Potosi and were able to catch a taxi. We booked a nice hotel and spend one day doing nothing.

Visiting the mines
The next morning we went to the mineral mines but not before having bought some gifts for the miners and the God of the miners; coca leaves, cigarettes, soft drinks and ... dynamite! Dynamite is widely available in Potosi and everybody is free to buy it. The miners work under extremely poor conditions. Many miners die because of accidents in the mines and even more of them die at an early age because of the dust in their lungs. The tour was tough; we sometimes had to crawl through narrow alleys and had to breathe in the warm, dusty air. For those who are interested in some background information, have a look at www.thedevilsminer.com. We've seen that movie about a 14-year old miner and it gives very good insight in the lives of the miners. We ended the tour with a demonstration of the power of dynamite. Every fireworks we will hear in the future will be as if someone only claps in his hands :)

Flat tire tours
After the mines in Potosi, we wanted to go to Uyuni for a tour around the famous salt flats (Salar de Uyuni). But because of the roadblocks we had to go to Tupiza in the south and start from there. The positive side of that was that you see much more during the tour than from Uyuni and it is a less touristy road. So we booked a 4-day tour with a well recommended agency and set off in a 4x4 truck with a driver, a cook and a Swiss couple. What happened in the next 4 days was both as extremely beautiful as terrible.

First the terrible part: on the second day we helped a stranded French couple with their broken engine. After 3 hours it worked again, but then we found out we had a flat tire. The tire was exchanged for the spare one and we had to rush the rest of the day in order to make up for all the lost time. At the end of the day we hit a sharp rock on the road and as a result we had 2 more flat tires. After fixing them with bicycle repair stuff and pumping them with a handpump, we set off for the hostal. Then the headlights broke down and we were driving in the dark desert with only parking lights.
On the 3rd day we had another 2 flat tires, which took 2 hours to fix, and we again arrived very late at our hotel where the promised reservation for our room had not been made by the tour agency.
Then the last day we ran out of gasoline, because the meters in the car didn't work. We had spare gasoline with us, but we had to watch the sunrise at a different spot than planned. So you can imagine that we were happy to get out of the car after 4 long, tiring and bone-shaking days!

But now the beautiful part: we saw amazing nature! Beautiful rocky mountains, desolate desert, different coloured lakes, flamingos, steamy and smelly geysers and on top of that the stunning views on the biggest salt flat of the world. And we've slept in a hotel completely made out of salt, which was a funny experience (and warmer at night than during the other freezing nights).

We booked a flight to La Paz because we didn't feel like spending another 10 hours in a nightbus right after this tour. It turned out we flew in an almost antique Douglas DC3. The flight was terrible; it seems a DC3 doesn't have the modern flaps etc. to keep the plane stable, because there was an enormous amount of turbulence and when we landed we both felt more dead than alive. Luckily we'd already booked an airport-pickup and a hotel in La Paz. Here we are looking for more adventures which you will read more about in our next update.