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We arrived at the bus station and just double checked if any buses were running that day but they were not.
As the others were checking I went off to buy empanadas which I had taken a liking to.
They were a great snack and cheap as chips.
I saw a sweet looking old woman on the streetside, so as usual she got my sympathy vote and I ordered three chicken and three meat in my best Spanish and handed her a fiver equivalent. She was so old and sweet I had not bothered to check the price, there was no way someone like that would try to rip me off......
So as I walked off I started checking out of habit.
Hang on I thought, this is well short, so questioned how much they were. She just ignored me, I could not believe it. The old witch!
I was not going away.
So then she got a note out and gave it me. Yea keep it coming as I kept my hand out.
She hesitated and I waited, so then begrudgingly a few coins came my way.
I still paid over the odds. I could not believe it.
These better be good, they cost a fortune I said as I threw them at the others.
Ok, no buses, so as usual Gabriele did all the dirty work and we found a minibus who said he could take us there. So half expecting the worse we jumped in.
Well this driver was crazy. He kept stopping in the street, running off for drinks, air filters, going toilet, you name it.
Then we came to the edge of town and saw a really steep hill with some dust trails from cars coming down the track.
There is no way we are going up there in a minubus we thought.
Oh yes we were!
The driver was laughing and bouncing up and down in his seat as we swerved within inches of the cliff edge. It was like a mini death road.
How we got up it without smashing his suspension I will never know.
Then we had a long journey across the top of the mountain and as we started going down the other side we stopped so a couple girls nipped out for the loo behind some bushes.
As soon as they had gone he started shouted to get back in the van.
No pee pee, no pee pee. Vamos, vamos!
He said that there was a block starting up ahead and we needed to beat it.
Our hearts sank as we went round the corner and saw some cars backing up.
Looks like we just wasted two hours we thought.
However there was a lorry blocking the road but it was not a protest blockade.
It had broken down and another had got stuck on the bend. There was just enough room to get past but the lorries were having trouble moving.
We all got out and watched the chaos ahead, expecting a lorry to go off the cliff at any moment.
After a while they cleared it, so our driver told us to walk down and he would meet us after the broken down lorry.
We started to walk off and then realised we had all our gear on the bus.
The b****** was going to do a runner we thought as we started running back up the hill.
Iris had already thought of this so, so being real macho men we all left her in the van alone with him to guard everything.
The driver got quite upset we had not trusted him. The reason he told us to walk was that he was worried for our safety as he would have to go around the outside of the lorry and there was a risk he could go off the side of the cliff.
Well, we were not to know were we.
So anyway, back in the van and off we shoot down the valley to what looked like a hold up.
There were some Menacing looking men stood either side of the road with a piece of string across.
I kid you not.
This has got to be the most amateur hold up ever I thought. you cant hold up a van with string.
Turns Out they wanted to take advantage of people using the short cut through their village and decided to charge a toll. No doubt it will be a ransom and we will have to pay.
They would only let us through if we paid them 25 pence.......
Ransom handed over, they dropped the string and waved us through.
Off we went again down more dusty tracks and even across a river bed and a railway line. He would have made a terrific driver for the Dakar rally.
Five hours later we finally arrived in Potosi, and he was true to his word and never asked for a further penny.
We had not booked anywhere to stay as we did not know if we would make it, but I had the address for a hostel just off the square. Again it said the staff were unfriendly, and boy this time they were. But it was cheap and a good location and it was only for one night as there was not much to see.
It was our last night together as a bunch so we decided to go have some drinks.
The town was absolutely dead, we had no idea were all the other tourists were, but they certainly were not in the town centre.
We found a pizza restaurant advertising happy hour so went in for some mojitos.
Good job happy hour was an hour as it took him that long to make the drinks.
Two hours and two drinks later we decided to call it a night and headed back to see the friendly staff in the hostel.
Potosi was once one of the richest cities in South America due to the Silver mines in the mountain it sits on. The Silver has more or less dried up, but the locals still try to scrape a living out of it.
The main attraction is to get down the mines and see just how hard a life is for a miner. I had not planned on going as I am getting claustrophobic in my old age, but luckily it was Sunday the next day and it was closed, so I had a good excuse not to go.
There was a restaurant up a tower with a great view of the city, so we all decided to go there for lunch the next day.
It was a hell of a walk, and then as we got to the bottom of the tower we could not believe the sign telling us the lift was out of order.
Typical.
Remember we are at over 2 miles above sea level, so we slowly huffed our way up trying to get some oxygen.
It brings you to an observation deck that only goes half way round to a lift door, which as you know was not working.
How on earth do you get up to the restaurant we thought. Then we noticed an emergency ladder going up through a hatch with a badly written sign with an arrow pointing up saying restaurant.....
Surely not. It was a vertical ladder and a small hatch.
Unbelievable.
We climbed up and sure enough popped up through the restaurant floor as other people dining there and staff never batted an eyelid.
It really tickled me.
The view was fantastic and we paid hardly anything for the meal.
After we finished the others wanted to get a cab back, but I wanted to walk off the meal and try to upload some photos.
The internet throughout Bolivia had been horrendous, and it was taking me ages to update my blogs and photos.
I found an internet cafe that had flat screen monitors. Wow it was flash, the internet must be good I thought.
After fifteen minutes of waiting for facebook to load I decided to call it a day and went back to the hostel.
We were booked on the overnight bus to la paz which we wefe all a bit worried about. We had heard so many stories about people being robbed or held up at gunpoint. But there were six of us travelling together so hoped we would be ok.
Next stop La Paz..........
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