At the Copacabana

Yer, well, it wasn't that Copacabana, rather the one near Lake Titicaca (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Titicaca) on the border between Bolivia and Peru, allegedly the highest navigable lake in the world (although like all things in Bolivia I bet there is a higher one in China somewhere). Supposed to beautiful but unfortunately for me I was seriously ill. My camera however managed to make it out in the hands of a rather skilled photographer, but I didnt get to see any of these lovely sights....

Rather, and excuse the following but I felt like I had a connection with this lump of porcelain having not left it's side for 38 hours straight, my sole attraction was this:

True horror.

Our Lady of Peace

La Paz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Paz) is a cool city. When i first got there i thought of New York, for god knows what reason why. Was there for a week for various admin reasons and could probably have stayed much longer. Good food, cheap, lots of night-life and tonnes of activities to do. The only problem being the altitude leaves you knackered all the time and if i hadn't already been through the hell of adjusting then i would probably have found it really rather tough.

Anyway - this was the biggest sandwich I've ever had. it was twice this size (photo taken halfway through meal) and had cheese, ham, steak, egg, salad and loads of other stuff in it.

Zebra crossing! These folk would help you across the road.

They like a good cake.

The death road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yungas_Road), pretty famous, very beautiful. i rode with vertigo bikes and the bike I had was excellent. I wanted to wax lyrical about it but i found out that the place deserves it's name - a Israeli girl plummeted off teh edge a few days back and died (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3873682,00.html). Very sad. Couldn't take too many photos as I was nailing it down the road but got a few and have a DVD of photos the company took.

Cholitas wrestling on a Sunday in El Alto (the highest part of the city at over 4000m) was well funny. The place had an amazing view and the wrestling was imitation WWF (WWE now?) but was mainly great because the women fought. Kids absoltuley loved it, real family event and deeply funny. The air was really thin, hard to breath and yet these Bolivians were jumping around and all sorts. Tough people

Outside the venue there seemed to be a table football tournament going on. Some of the chaps playing were amazing, flicking the ball not the air and scoring all sorts of improbable goals.

This little scamp was sat next to us with his mum. he was well funny. I offered him some popcorn at one point and instead of take a handful the little terror took the whole bag and from that point on we were best mates.

and this is his slightly older brother. I tried to instil an education ethic in them by repeatedly telling them to go to school

Beautiful city.

Salar de Uyuni

The Salar de Uyuni wasn't a place I'd thought seriously about going to (went to a salt plain in northern Namibia and wasn't that bothered about it overly), but ended up there and decided along with a few of us to do a 3day 2 night tour. Turned out to be possibly the most beautiful place I've ever been. First day, after the train cemetery, on the main Salar, stayed in a hotel made completely out of salt, which was so dry that i could hardly breath.... so very very very dry.... then the next day drove around ridiculously high places and saw some cool rocks and some salt lakes with salty water and flamingos and near volcanoes and then the last day, after staying at 4,400m (oh the headaches and cold...), ended up a geezers (sure that's the wrong spelling) and then a hot water spring to wash the dirty of the previous few days off.

I think, taken between the group, I've got over 2,000 photos and pretty much anyone who has been to this place takes a similar number, so to save time I've only uploaded a few and for more information i give you this useful wikitruth link... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Uyuni and if you want more photos just google the name and see all the crazy perspective things people do.

MATHS!

I now know what it feels like to be way too dry... http://www.audiomicro.com/free-south-park-towelie-sound-clips-way-way-too-dry-download-731248

Balls....

this struck me as being a little too precarious, but all survived

These little (and sometimes big) whirlwinds popped up all over the place. Apparently known to be strong enough to rip all the bags off the top of a Landrover and give the occupants of said vehicle a bit of scare.

This video really doesn't do the spectacle justice as it's too short (I ran out of battery, it could have been hours long) but this cloud seemed to be stuck in some form of hell loop. the winds above the mountain must have been moving in opposing direction and the water vapour was stuck there cycling round. the cloud would lose it's shape, almost be destroyed and then after a little while slowly regain it's existence only to be splayed and spread apart once again.

Big shout out to those on our trip. It was fooking excellent, and excellent to spend time with you all.

Silver Mines and Bombs

The silver mines in Potosi are not a nice place to be. A few years back I read "The Road to Wigan Pier" by George Orwell and he talks a lot about the conditions that miners endured back in the early 1900s. he also regularly refers to how things have got better as technology had developed. these mines in Potosi have missed the technological boat. there are around 5000 miners working as a cooperative, each earning about 50 bolivianos a day depending on how much work they get done (about twice the minimum wage and around £5). the life expectancy is around 15 years from entering the mine for work to death. the air is pretty horrid, and there is asbestos absoltuley everywhere, the work is back breaking, the tunnels are small and regularly collapse.

The mountain, Cerro Rico (which i think means rich mountain) used to be a great source of silver - and made Potosi the richest city in the world back during the Spanish times. Now there is very little silver, the mountain has been trimmed by about 400m in height due to the mining and all that can be extracted is trace elements (I couldn't quite pin down from our guide which they were but mainly zinc and tin i think).

on the way to the mine you have to buy presents for the miners, mainly ciggies (they love a good smoke down in those hot humid oxygen-less mines do them miners...), pop (orange pop is best), coca leaves and dynamite.

This is the stuff they're all after... Looks like a rock to me, but apparently there is useful stuff there.

The mine head at around 4400m.

The shady little entrance

This hardy chap laughed at me because I couldn't pick up one of the bags that they had extracted (just behind him). They weighed about 80kg!

This is a weird thing they have in there. It's a representation of their god of the underworld, names as Tio (uncle in English). He's the ying to Patchu Mama's yang (the god of the other world and equatable to mother nature). The miners gather round these statues that are dotted around the mine ever Friday and get pissed on pure alcohol (literally 96% alcohol, tastes mental...)

These are some of the miners, they all looked a little mental and a little bit hard. They smoked all the fags, took as many presents as they could get off us then carried on with their ridiculously back breaking work. The first lot below were pushing a 2 tonne trolley full of rock out of the mine (you had to dodge them when you heard them round the corner because there were no breaks on teh cart and they would literally crush you by accident if you got in the way of their momentum)

This bloke was batting a whole in the ground which he was to fill with dynamite and then blow up to loosen the rock.

\

Anyway - seeing as we could buy dynamite we bought some extra (was with Israelis who unfortunately know far too much about explosives...).

This is the detonator...

This is the dynamite...

This is the bomb I made, I've forget the name of the white powder stuff we wrapped it in but it basically makes the explosion bigger (same effect as flour... I'm really kicking myself that I cant remember).

RUN!