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Hola Amigos from the highest city in the world!
In Uyuni we bumped into some Irish friends we had met in Rio by coinsedence who had just visited Uyuni. In amongst their rant about th freezing cold raining weather in Potosi in a ridiculously thick Irish accent i managed to pick up the words Kuala, den and great, i just nodded and agreed. We they caught out buses our seperate ways. After a bumpy 7 hour journey we arrived at 2am, which wasnt ideal but it beat catching the earlier bus at 9am! As we looked through the guidebook/bible we found a hostel called the Kuala den, so based on their recommendation we went for it. It wasn't important where we stayed anyway as the plan was have a sleep then do a tour and then move on. A week later we are still here.
We hadn't expected to stay here long because of Charles altitude sickness, the cold (yet to be discovered), and the lack of activites apart from the mine tour. We we're both generally pretty run down after roughing it on the salt flat tour and the rubbish showerless hostels during that period and in Uyuni. Anyway we woke up the next morning rearing to get our day in Potosi over and done with. We wandered round in the morning looking for the city center for pancakes and a tour place... we found neither. So we wandered back to the hostel unamused only to find our hobby for the next week. The hostel had pretty much a home cinema with hundereds of DVDs for free. So we have basically spent our first few days watching films with bowls of cereal and then our nights with a pizza and film! We managed to rack up a good CV of films watched in Potosi including... Hotel Rwanda, The motorcycles diary, American history X (3 times after this mornings viewing) and so on...
Then came an Isreali bloke who insisted we watched his films, which pretty much spoilt our CV as his collection included films such as; stoned age (a supposed comedy, we'll i think it was?), garden party (the name basically sums it up), the day the earth stood still (didn't watch it but Charles assures me it was worse than garden party but i think if he saw it he would think differently)! Needless to say we we're quite happy when he told us he was leaving the next day.
The next day I woke up to the sight of a new Isreali figure in our room, one of a much bigger nature. Suddenly I wished for Alex the Isreali who had left back as the new ex military monster couldn't do anything without the whole hostel hearing it. That night we went with him to book our mining tour and get some food so I thought anyway. It seemed he had a different interpratation of what we were going for as when we left he said "Lets go fight some Bolivians". Me and Charles laughed and carried on walking. He didn't drop it though, he began asking how many times we have had fights before with Bolivians we both replied in a confused manner "None. Why?". He then told us how he had three fights with the same two guys, he explained the story in great depth over and over again desperatly looking for our approval, but to this day i'm not really sure why these Bolivian men deserved a beating from an ex-military Isreali. Anyway after some of his agressive shouting in English to a Spanish speaking women at the tour office she agreed to reduce the price of the tour for the next day. We then wen't to lunch and both Me and Charles discovered this guy was more awkward than Daniels (sorry if you're reading this) as their was a simple menu in this reseraunt in Spanish but it had pictures so it wasn't really an issue I though anyway... he shouted so much instructions to the Spanish speaking waitress in English about what he wanted. That she just stood their shell shocked at what the hell this guy wanted. He then sulked and decided to have something actually on the menu. The meal carried on in similar vain as he complained about the temperature of the coke he had, the fact they didn't understand the word ice and so forth. Me and Charles at this point were desperate to escape him and his ways! So we went back to the hostal and watched another film.
Then yesterday, we finally did our mine tour after 5 or 6 days of putting it off. We started off at the tour shop before going to some persons house and getting equiped with our helmets (which saved both our lives on a few occasions) and so on. We then went to the miner's market to buy gifts for the miners as presents, so me and Charles bought some coca leaves, a drink and some ridiculously bad cigerattes (as in picture). Some people bought over gifts such as home made dynamite. We then seperated into groups the spanish speaking tour and the English speaking... 10 others and then Me and Charles. Our guide was an ex miner who spoke pretty good English and was a wealth of knowledge on the subject. We then entered the mine and began our journey into the darkness. We then wandered round and climbed up and down many ladders to deeper parts of the mine which get up to 45 degrees and then other parts which are below freezing. We were told all about how the miners worshipped the devil and how it is the festival of the devil next Sunday, which should be interesting! We then met some miners gave them our gifts and so on and then re emerged to the sunlight which was almost blinding. We then spent the afternoon uploading a hell of a lot of photos from the previous week or so!
Today we move onto Sucre, Bolivia's constatutional capital!
Hope all is well back home!
Love Max x
p.s I am extremely jealous of the snow back home!
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