Dinosaur footprints and Silver Mines

Sucre is a beautiful city with many of its colonial buildings intact. Its main claim to fame is its dinosaur fields containing over 5000 footprints from 290 different animals.

We could have covered the 100 miles from Sucre to Potosi by coach in 3 hours but decided to take the train that took 7 hours!. Fascinating journey that at times resembles Disney´s runnaway train ride as it ran up and down the mountains along sheer drops into stunning valleys. The train was actually a coach that had had its wheels removed and then mounted on a old wagon chassis. No other changes had been made, the driver even had a steering wheel. The service supports lots of mountain villages that have no road access. Every time we stopped the indigenous people would crowd on the train with all their market goods. It then took 15 minutes for the driver to get them to put the stuff on the roof rack. In the middle of nowhere family groups wave the train down as if it was a taxi. An uncomfortable 7 hours, occasionally exciting but never boring.

Potosi exists because of a single mountain that for 500 years was the worlds most prolific source of silver. The Spanish forced indians to work in the mine making them stay underground for 6 months at a time. Millions of indians died. Nowadays the mountain is mined by cooperatives who are currently making a good living out of zinc and lead as well as silver. 12000 miners including children as young as 11, work the mines and have an average live span of 20 years. We went down with a guide and spent nearly 3 hours crawling around, dodging fully laden trucks, seeing miners go down 60M shafts and hearing dynamite explosions. It was hot, dusty and at times difficult to breath. A sobering experience. We were knackered after 3 hours and very glad to get out.

Before you enter the mine you go to the miners market where you buy the miners presents - cocoa leaves, 95% alcohol, dynamite, fuses and the most disgusting looking cigarettes. An old man went to one of the stalls and casually walked off with an enormous sack of cocoa leaves. His getaway was a bit on the slow side and the stall owner quickly intercepted him and recovered his leaves. The old man carried on his way but the stall owners wife, a large lady in traditional Andean dress, decided that he needed a good talking to so she waddled after him. A minute later she was back and the old man was on his back where she had given him a good right hander.

Bolivia is so cheap. We have a nice en-suite room overlooking quiet courtyard. We can get perfect espresso. In the evening we have an excellent bottle of Bolivian wine in a nice restaurant and follow this up with a few cocktails in a bar with live music. All of this is costing us less than 16 pounds a day for both of us

The only down side of Bolivia is that our abiding memory will be the smell of male urine and roast chicken