Blog Post 5 - Uyuni to Sucre
Another early start but after a great breakfast at the Hostel. Most of the hostels have a free breakfast included.
Having booked our bus trip to Potosí on-line on the great web site we were alerted to call Busbud, walked the 1 km to the bus station in Uyuni to be greated at the gate by a young lady who immediately seemed to know who we were once we convinced her that we already had a ticket. The internet booking system today never seems to amaze me.
All loaded on to the bus, which left spot on time, we were off up along a very modern road towards Potosí. A four hour trip through the most barren hill country you’ve ever seen. The road took up past a whole range of small very poor villages and one particular very smart on that was probable a mining town. Bolivia is mined extensively for a significant number of heavy metals including lead and copper. You can’t drink the water in Bolivia because is is contained with heavy metals. You even need to use bottled water to make tea.
We arrived in Potosí at 4,000m early afternoon. That’s 275m higher than Mt Cook and it felt like it. The air was definitely quite thin and climbing the stairs to our 3rd story room left you in need of a small rest a the top before proceeding to our room.
Potosi is a city built at the foot of a silver Mountain, Cerro Rico. The native people discovered silver there in 1544 and soon after that the Spanish got in on the act and established a mining town to exploit the vast silver resources in the realtively small mountain. The silver basically funded the rise of the Spanish empire. The minning process was very dangerous and after the Spanish depleted the resources of the local people they imported millions of African slavers to do the dangerous work. The life expectancy of a miner was between 25 and 40. It is estimated that between 1545 and 1825, some 8 million slaves died in the process of making Spain very wealthy.
In 1572 the Spanish built a mint that is now a museum and we fortunately were guided through the museum by an English speaking guide who explained very well the whole process and history of the mining and minting process. If you have time it would be worth googling the silver mining and Spanish involvement in this area.
We boarded the next bus at Potasi’s new flash bus terminal at 12.30 and headed off and down to Sucre. Sucre is 1400 m lower than Potosí and it sure feels good. You still can’t hold your breath for more than 20 seconds as you just run out of oxygen. The 3 hr bus trip to Sucre which actually took 4hrs. The bus spent quite a lot of time on the way picking up and waiting for more passengers to fill the bus. The trip again took us through very hilly barren country over many dried up river valleys with small communities struggling to eke out a living. Wherever there was water they tried to farm the land and it wasn’t until we got very close to Sucre did we see any really productive farming operations although still pretty small scale with little if any machinery involved.
We are staying in a really nice hostel in Sucre, the same one that Anna stayed in when she was here in 2017. We have a very nice large room overlooking the garden. We are here for 4 nights and our enjoying time to rest. The previous week was all go.
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