Day 23 - Onwards to the Silver Mining Area and highest city in the world - Potosi at 4000 metres altitude!
 
This morning we awoke to 'high alert status' for the town of Sucre, ie 'don't go there!' but looking out of the hotel everything looked pretty normal to us, note home, we are ok so don't read what the embassies at home/Oz say! After poor Bilynda had the frustration of dealing with our booked taxi firm who were demanding more money!!(was that in fear for their safety ha ha!) we were all finally on route to our next stop, the silver mining town of Potosi . It was good to do this journey as previously we had come through it at 4am on the night bus so had not seen much!!

The journey was pretty remote winding through arid brown rocky mountains following a pretty dry river for some of it which had the most bizarre 'disneyland style' bridge over it which our driver stopped for us to take a photo. On route there were many stray dogs just laid on the side of the road nowhere near civilisation or houses. All of them wore ribbons though as if they were owned, very bizarre!! The landscape, where there was any signs of civilisation, consisted of dry farming land and a few straw huts and that was about it!
 
Finally we arrived at Potsoi, which claims to be the highest city in the world again at 4000m. Our hotel Jerusalem was still being refurbished and wasn't up to much, grubby, cold and a tad dirty, probably the worst yet we have experienced with Kamuka but still not our worst in 9 months by far!! Ian feeling ill went straight to bed whilst the 3 of us went out to try and find food .
 
The town wasn't really up to much, didn't have the nicest feel about it, was dirty and smelly with a few old cathedrals and lots of beggars so overall we were glad only to be doing one night here! We ended up in the most bizarre of local restaurants with Hayley and Pete, where literally you have to pay up front for your 'dinner of the day' but have no idea what food you are getting!!!What were we all letting ourselves in for, think that's the last time Hayley and Pete decide to eat where we do! It actually ended up being not too bad and for 20 bolivianos (about 3 pounds) we experienced a starter salad, then soup, then 'pollo ala coca cola' (yes the fizzy stuff, don't ask!!) finished with blamanche and a drink! We did have to laugh about the randomness of this experience and it was great getting to know more about Hayley and Pete who are a really nice and funny couple.
 
With not much else to do that afternoon we ended up walking round the many 'closed farmacia's' for the rest of the day to get antibiotics for Ian which we eventually found, then later on sat in our room listening to very large bangs of gunfire (so we think) going on in the distance and right near to us also! We were hoping this was just the 6 of the group that had had the courage to go down the silver mines to see how the locals cope and also to experiment with gunpowder blowing up the place! but the amount of cracks and bangs going off seemed to last too long for it to be merely our group playing in the mountains! At one point I thought the unrest of the country had kicked off outside and we were going to be stuck in this hole, thankfully I was wrong. That eve we went to a really nice restaurant that Bilynda knew for abit of civilisation then packed again ready to basically get out of here!