Potosì

I arrived to Potosì on Monday afternoon. The city is at an altitude of 4060m, but walking up the hill from the bus station I didn`t feel the altitude at all. However, Tuesday morning I was getting out of breath just walking around town. Fortunately by the afternoon I was back to full strength. I went on a tour around the Casa National de Moneda, which used to be the old mint and is now the countries best museum.
On Wednesday I went with Greengo Tours for a trip into the local silver mines. Over 15000 people work in the mines, and they are the backbone of the local economy. The mines have been used for over 500 years and still going strong, but with around 8 million deaths in this period it`s fairly dangerous work. Even today the mines lack any real safety precautions. We got decked out in some gumboots, overalls and helmet. First stop was the miners market to buy some drinks for the miners, some coca leaves to chew on, and some sticks of dynamite to make the tour a bit more interesting.
The entrance to the mine was too small to stand up, but we had to run at full speed to beat the trolleys full of minerals being pushed out of the mine. We explored the caves for several hours, saw the tio (devil) which the miners give cigarettes to so they dont have accidents, and met the miners, the youngest was only 13 year old.
In the evening I headed to the markets to see the local buskers do their comedy performance (as the night before). Inevitably, being the only gringo around, they had to involve me in the show. This was a good test of my spanish, having to speak infront of 200 locals. However, after several minutes the spanish exceeded my knowledge, but this was probably fortunate since all Bolivian jokes seem to revolve around being gay.
Now I´m just about to catch a bus for 6 hours to Uyuni. This is the starting point for the 3 day trip around the salares (salt lakes), lagoons with flamingos and geysers. I´ve had lots of reports that its -15 degrees down there, strong winds, no hot showers and hardly a roof on any of the hostels, so hoping that my jumper will hold up to this test.