After a week of searching for voluntary work in Cochobamba I gave up and headed to Sucre, Bolivia's Judicial capital. Sucre is a beautiful colonial city brimming with white washed buildings and is blessed with a superlative climate nearly all year round, just think of a perfect English summers day. I spent two weeks in Sucreimproving my Spanish and teaching English to children aged between 7-12. There is little to say about this experience other than the fact that I was in absolute ecstasy staying put for a little while, and exercising my brain. I also took part in inter-cambio sessions where by you meet a local person who's learning English then spend half an hour speaking in English and half an hour speaking in Spanish. Although this obviously helped my language skills no end, it still kinda feels like I only have part membership to a secret club, and whenever I hear people speaking Spanish fluently I am green with envy. Teaching took me straight back to my time in Rwanda and I really found myself in my element, although when my Bolivian co-teacher began to read them Goldie Locks and the three Birds I did have to wonder the quality of teaching they were used to. Naturally given that my weeks were so disciplined with homework, lesson plans and early nights, come the weekends I had no problem justifying a few too many rums and a damn good dance. During my time in Sucre I met some really great like minded people (which made a nice change) and I really was sad to leave this temporary home.
After I'd caught my breath in Sucre I headed for Potosi, the highest city in the world (4060m)! My main reason for stopping here was the mines. Just to give you a brief history, when the Spanish arrived in 1545 they discovered ore deposits in the surrounding mountains which later became the most lucrative in the world. However with this sudden wealth came abominable human rights atrocities and millions of indigenous people and African slaves were imported as labourers of the mines. Although the silver has been depleted, thousands continue to work in the mines and children as young as 12 can still be found working there today. The miners work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for 5 pounds a day. To support the miners and give the outside world a better understanding of this line of work, local agencies run tours to the mines where by you can meet the miners in person. These have got to be some of the strongest men I've ever met.. Not only is the work they do back breaking, but a lot of them die within 10 years of being in the mines from silicosis pneumonia from breathing in toxic gases. Despite this bleak existence while talking to them the miners were very outgoing and friendly and happy to share the frank facts of their day to day existence. Whilst working they don't have time to eat so they chew coca leaves instead, which work as a stimulant and reduce hunger, these they bundle up inside their cheeks, similar to the way hamsters do. The common belief amongst the miners is that the mine is owned by the devil which they call Tio. In order to please the Tio every mine had a sculpture at its entrance, dedicated to him, which they provide with gifts of alcohol and cigarettes every Friday. Once a year they slaughter a llama in his honour and spread its blood across the gateway of the mine, so as to ensure their own blood won't be spilled that year. I love caves and normally would find this sort of under ground venture exciting but for some unknown reason when I entered the mine, fear washed over me and I felt genuinely panicked by being so deep under ground. At points we were crawling through holes an inch or two bigger than our bodies and after a couple of hours of exploring we were all ready to find daylight once more, which only emphasised how resilient these men must be to endure this kind of atmosphere daily.
From Potosi I swiftly moved on to Uyuni which sits at the mouth of the world’s largest salt flats. From here I met back up with my friend Sarah and we joined three others, Chris, Patricia and Mariana and headed out into the great unknown! We all bundled into a jeep for three days and drove to various sights of natural beauty with Favio our tour guide and possibly the most unanimated and grumpiest man on the planet! Still despite Favio's rather mean disposition this was one of the most wonderful tours I've ever been on and visually one of the most stunning places I've been fortunate enough to bare witness to on this trip. So naturally I will provide you with some interesting facts about this wonder land. Firstly, yes, if you lick the floor it does indeed taste of salt, tried and tested. Secondly it is estimated to contain 10 billion tones of salt of which around 25,000 tones is extracted annually, which I may have contributed to slightly with a small pot which subsequently exploded all over my bag... serves me right for trying to steel from mother nature! Thirdly it makes for a great blank canvas for a variety of magic eye style photographs. Admittedly I probably got a little too into this idea and after an hour of balancing in a range of rather awkward positions my subjects point blankly refused to let me play about with their bodies any more and retreated back to the land cruiser for lunch. Never tiring of this kind of nonsense I persuaded Sarah to venture back out with me in order to get a couple of great phallic symbol shots of me and a cactus. This displeased Favio terribly because apparently you can very easily get lost in a barren land of salt and sky with one small oasis in the middle of it, personally I think he just had an inferiority complex, either way he put an abrupt end to our penis poses and told us in no uncertain terms to get back in the car.
It has to be said that due to the altitude, and the fact that it's winter here right now the Salar de Uyuni can get well bellow freezing at night and therefore besides trying to fit as many layers on our bodies as was humanly possible, resulting in us all resembling Michelin men, we were also forced to partake in the consumption of an alcoholic beverage, purely for medicinal purposes you understand. The following couple of days we were whizzed around a variety of enchanting mountains and lakes including one that is the breeding ground for three species of South American flamingo, how you tell the difference I'm not entirely sure as to me they are all rather ridiculous looking balls of pink feathers, held up by match stick legs which simply defy the laws of gravity, but then I'm not exactly Mr Attenborough, so what would I know. After a brief bond with the pink things and lots of ooohhhs and aaaarrrhhhs, Sarah and I bid farewell to the others and hopped off in Chile in the small and very touristy town of San Pedro. This was a stop of convenience more than anything else, however we did manage to find fun in the company of a rather large and messy group of Brazilians for an evening and I got the chance to discover my hidden talents on a sand board, which turned out to be limited. Personally I blame it on the sand, there was far too much of it and it kept getting in my eyes, still good fun all the same. Unfortunately my bus out of San Pedro got caught in a sand storm and I was stuck in the city for another three days after Sarah left to meet her parents. Given that it was the most expensive town in the whole of Chile, and that I'd exhausted all avenues of cheap fun to be had within the first 48 hours of being there, it wasn't an ideal place to get stuck. Thankfully the storm passed and a couple of days later I was back on the road heading for Argentina...
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