Potosi

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We are currently in the highest city in the world - Potosi! It's at 4100m, making it pretty short on oxygen, which combined with the lovely fumes from all the old buses, makes it quite tricky to breathe. Potosi used to be the third richest city in the world, but is now just another poor Bolivian city with some pretty colonial buildings. The reason for all the wealth was the Cerro Ricco (Rich Mountain). One day, back in the early 1500s a llama farmer was a bit chilly and lit a fire on the side of the mountain. Imagine his surprise when molten silver came out! After this the city's population swelled to 160,000 and around nine million miners were killed over the three centuries that silver was mined here.

Many tourists visit the mines, which are now tin mines, but I really didn't fancy spending a couple of hours stuck in small tunnels, surorunded by arsenic fumes and watching young people working. It's a sad city.

The Cerro Rico dominates the sky line of Potosi and is a formidable presence. We wanted to vist the old mint, but it had strange opening hours and weird rules about being in tour groups, so we didn't bother. We did climb up an old, beautiful tower though, which gave us good views acros the city.

Tommorow we will get a bus to Uyuni. From there we will hopefully be going on a four day salt flats trip and ending up in Chile.