Potosi: The third highest city in the World

26 September

+ Potosi is the third highest city in the world (ref. Wikipedia) with an elevation of 4068m. It was one of the most important cities for the Spanish conquerers due to the high number of gold and silver mines in the region. During the explotation of these mines, more than 6 million people died due to the extreme conditions of work, with continuous explotions, lack of oxigen, drinks and food and continuos exposure to mercury. Today it is still possible to visit these mines which are still active but we didn't do it because it is quite hard and dangerous.

+ Being at more than 4000m above the sea level, you may imaging the cold, right? That's why we took the bold decision of not staying overnight. We just spent the afternoon and then cought another night bus southwards, to Tupiza.  We walked around the town, made some shopping and we even went to the cinema to watch the cool movie of "Hangover 2: in Bangkok".

+ The city is very cute, old, full of churches and many stone buidlings. In a way, it looks like Toledo. You could see that it used to be a very rich city. 

+ You may have noticed that in each picture there are electricity cables around. Well, that's how it is. It is almost impossible to make a photo of a building without catching a cable, really. It is very normal in all developing countries we visited but Bolivia gets the prize!

Sucre: the true capital with a "Andalusian touch"

24 September

+ After very cool days around La Paz and the Amazons, it was time to head South. The first destination in our list was Sucre. The trip took us 14 hours that we did on a luxury bus during the night. The bus, which had huge leather semi-bed seats, only cost 15€!! We love Bolivia. :)

+ We arrived early in the morning and we were very hungry. So the first thing we did was to visit the local market where besides selling fruit, vegetables and all the normal stuff, we could also have exquisite typical breakfast and lunch for so so little money.

+ Sucre is actually the real capital of Bolivia. La Paz is just where the goverment is located but all administrative stuff is based on Sucre. It is a very beautiful city which feels more like a big town. Here ,we could observe much better the colonial architecture with low houses and plenty of churches. Since most of the buildings are painted in white and appear to have some arabic architectual influence, it gived us sometimes the feeling that we were walking in an Andalusian town. Sucre was also a surprisingly clean and calm city.

 

     

+ Something which is amazing in Bolivia are the cars: all of those vehicles which here are considered "bus" are in reality second-hand school minibuses that came from Japan and were used for transporting children. You can imagine the space for your legs... The Bolivians didn't even bother to remove the stickers from the windows or erase the Japanese letters from the outside.

+ Another fascinating story about cars is the so-called "Transformers". These cars were also bought from other countries where people drive on the left side. As in Bolivia people drive on the right side and are used to have the wheel on the left side, well, they just change the wheel from side but they left the dash-info (Km counter, speed, fuel, etc) on the left.

The Transformer

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+ Sucre from a nice mirador:

 + In the surroundings of Sucre it has been discovered one of the most important archeological sites with dinosaurs footsteps.  So we went to see them. We were expecting to see the footprints on the floor, wouldn't you? Of course not. You had to look on a wall...?¿? the point is that the tectonic plates have moved and what it used to be the ground is now a vertical wall...

+ To be honest, it was quite dissapointing... The funniest, the museum they built around with replicas of the dinosaurs in real scale and even reproduction of the sounds they may have made...