Tupiza

We were still in Tupiza, the town in southern Bolivia mentioned last time, on 2nd November which is the Catholic holiday of all saints day and a big event here. It seemed like everyone in town got dressed up in their best clothes and went to the cemetery to put flowers on the graves. Outside the cemetery there was a big party going on with stalls, food, drink and music.

The next day we went horse riding in Tupiza which was really good fun though my backside is still suffering as a result. They have great wild west style landscape around the town and the horses were really calm apart from when mine was chased by three dogs and went for a bit of a run.

After Tupiza we went to Potosi which at 4100m is the highest city in the world. It was built at such an inhospitable location because of the mountain next to it which had huge silver deposits. The Spanish brought local people from all over the Andes to work there as slave labourers and as a result both Potosi and Spain became incredibly rich.

There are still local people, including children, who work in the mine even though the average life expectancy for a worker is apparently only 15 years because of accidents and lung disease. Strangely the most popular tourist tour, which didn´t appeal to me at all, is a trip down into the mines crawling on your hands and knees and breathing in the toxic dust.

The reason that we were enthusiatic about going to Potosi was the amazing Spanish colonial architecture mentioned by our guidebook. What it didn´t mention was that all the colonial architecture would be covered with grafitti and falling to bits and that it would be possibly the most filthy city in South America.

Both Steve and I took an instant dislike to Potosi and so after looking at the old Spanish Royal Mint, which was really quite interesting, we moved on pretty quickly to Sucre.

Sucre is the offical capital of Bolivia (in case any one ever appears on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and it comes up) even though the government and most other things usually associated with the capital of a country are actually in La Paz.

So far it seems like a really nice town so we are planning to spend a week here taking some Spanish lessons.