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Okay so not only because I'm falling further behind with this thing by the day, but also because we also spent just a week in Bolivia and didn't do too much, I'm going to try and cover most of it in just one blog. So Santa Cruz was the first stop after the Death Train, and that's an easy one. We got there, stayed a night and did f***all because there's f***all there, and left the next day. I mean there's tons of electronic shops and restaurants and a token town square with a church, a statue of some bloke in the middle and a museum, which was closed, and that's pretty much it. So after that short and fruitless stop, we endured another overnight bus, in addition to the millions we had taken by that point, down to Sucre. Sucre is the judicial capital of the country and a UNESCO world heritage site for it's colonial architecture and historical buildings. So we spent a couple of days there cruising around the multitude of churches and mooching about the market where I had a dodgy chorizo and got acute food poisoning. The town is actually really nice and a hell of a lot better to look at than Santa Cruz, as all the sights are maintained really well so that the place has a more contemporary historical feel to it if that makes any sense. Whilst there we also started throwing cash around buying loads of typical Bolivian souvenirs like Llama and Alpaca jumpers, wallets, socks, hats and other apparel to make sure we wouldn´t freeze on the Inca trail as well as to give as gifts, since I had barely bought anyone anything at that point so far into the trip. So after a couple days of sight seeing and shopping, we took the short yet nerve-racking bus journey up some steep dirt roads in the mountains to Potosi, the highest city in the world at 4100m. When we got there, the altitude really knocked the stuffing out of us. We were immediately out of breath just walking around and just generally felt pretty s***ty. And I got some killer headaches and lost my appetite which isn't like me. But I didn't eat for 2 days after climbing Kilimanjaro so I wasn't surprised. Sleeping wasn't easy either, it's tough to sleep when your heart rate at rest is pushing 100. So it wasn't the most comfortable first day, but gradually we got used to it. So Potosi is a really nice town anyway, and we followed a recommended walking tour from a free brochure from the hostel that was actually pretty good. It covered all the main places as well as some interesting less touristy ones, and again it was good to find out a little about them rather than the usual mere firing off a couple of photos of random things. But apart from the typically plentiful museums and churches for a South American town, Potosi is primarily a mining town renowned mainly for silver. Although the number of mines and in turn the prosperity of the place has massively dwindled since the Spanish colonial era, there are still many mines in operation and you can do tours to them for pretty cheap. So we kitted up in fetching boiler suits and helmets and went down into the depths of one of the mountains on one of the mining tours. It was pretty interesting at first learning about the working hierarchy and how they mine for silver as well as the way they have to please the mining gods by offering booze and cocoa leaves to these fairly explicit statues. But once we started going deeper, the tour quickly became a painstakingly monster effort rather than an enjoyable stroll. We had to crawl around in blisteringly hot conditions whilst breathing in toxic fumes that burned the lungs and made the struggle that much more difficult. It was one of the toughest things I've ever had to endure, and these miners spend almost every day of there entire lives down there until they die prematurely from any one of the number of hazards. I tell you, you can stand in front of the mirror at the gym and pump as many weights as you like, but you won't even come close to being as tough as these guys, it defies belief how they do it. I mean by the end of the mere 2 hour tour down there I was a bloody mess, and I´m supposed to be young and healthy! I felt like my lungs had melted, I was dizzy from the lack of oxygen and I had sweated out most of my body-weight. But afterwards back outside, they let us blow up some dynamite which was pretty cool. When I got back to the hostel however, I showered up and was relaxing on one of the couches when I realised my arms had come up in a rash. I went into the bathroom to check myself and sure enough every inch of my body was covered in it, even my face. I was in a bad way, an allergic reaction to the silver nitrate I had inhaled in volumes whilst in the mines. Apparently it happens to some people. So I wasn't feeling too great for a while, but eventually the bumps went down and my skin returned to normal after a day or 2. Turns out, that was nothing compared to what I was going to contract in La Paz. Looks like I wasn't having the best of luck in Bolivia. Still, can´t say I didn´t find the place interesting so far, and you can't complain with the prices. Probably the cheapest place we've been on the entire trip!
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