Dear friends,

Thursday we came back from our four-day-trip, tired, sunburned and
full of impressions.

Monday morning we started at nine o´clock, five passangers on the two
rear benches of a jeep, our guide and driver Geraldo and our chef
Christina, his wife. We started from Tupiza at 3000m. The first day
went by with lots of amazing views. Bit by bit, we ascended following
the way Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid took after they robbed their
last money transport. We didn´t go to San Vincente, the place where
they were shot, because the only thing to see there is a graveyard
that looks like all other graveyards of the region and their grave is
yet to be identified.

Carmen had bought us a lot of supplies, including a bag of coca
leaves. The use is quite simple: tear off the stems, put them between
your cheek and the teeth and wait. Some people use natrium
bicarbonate but that is only to produce more salvia and is not very
healthy. The first times you do it your lips will become a little bit
numb, that's all you will feel in spite of a quite ugly taste.
Annotation: The recent riots in Boliva are also caused by the
presidents plans to cut down coca production. Due to international
politics, each farmer shall only be allowed to grow enough coca for
the local use and thereby stopping the cocaine production and export.
Though we all had some coca the height did affect us all, causing
headaches, difficulties breathing and nausea.

Till evening we had reached 4228m, and stayed in the little village /
town San Antonio de Lipez. Despite the altidude we played a very
amusing game of volleyball with the locals. A wonderful sunset,
moonrise and watching the moon and the stars (through the binoculars
Priti sold me as she is right now in the plane back to London. A
million thanks from me and all the people travelling with me, the
local people I meet) rounded up the day. I tell you that I will
never travel again without binoculars. Did you know that the three
stars making up the sword of Orion (at least that's the way I call
the stars under the belt) are actually binary stars and the middle
one is a nebula?

Travelling in a jeep with a driver is seemingly the best way to
travel a route like this one. With a rented car (which had to be 4x4
and you had to have a lot of off road experience) you would get lost
with almost certainty. In spite of not driving yourself you have the
possibility to stop (almost) every time you want to enjoy or make a
photo. Though we did not have as much time as Priti and I took,
probably we two would never have arrived, as we had to do some 200 km
of worst road each day. Most of the time we went through a high and
extremly dry but not very hot desert plateau. We all were surprised
by the comfort of this trip. We were only five tourists not the
possible six, which made a hell of a difference, the food was good
and the accommodations were acceptable. But we were up to eleven
hours each day on the road and were really tired each evening.

On the second day we reached the ghost town of Ruinas de San Antonio
after a few kilometres. Here the people had searched for gold and
silver since the sixteenth century, up to 5000 persons had been
living here. But the devil was controlling the town (that's at least
what the inhabitants thought) men disapeared or got blind overnight.
It is important to know, that for the locals mining is closely
connected to the devil who is owner of the minerals. Even today
miners sacrifice to the devil before entering the mines. Further down
you will find more information about this. After too much of this
strange stuff happened the people left San Antonio and moved to the
new San Antonio where we had spent the night. Still noble metals are
searched in the ruins but nobody spends the night there. They tried
to reseatle people there in the 70's but did not succeed.

We passed a few lagoons and an inactive volcano which I hardly
remember as the height had affected me and I had a headache and was
very tired. It was bad enough that I did not enter the thermal baths
we reached at 4400m. But I got better after taking a painkiller. We
saw the first flamingos then a highlight at highest altitude:
bubbling, stinking geysers or to be more exact boiling mud holes at
4955m. I never had seen something similar and it was a relatively
harmless way to get a impression of the earth's vulcanic power.

Once again day three started fantastic, as each of the days kind of
replaced the last one's impressions with new and even better ones.
This is one of the reasons why I can't describe every detail of this
route and rather than excerpts. As we were going from Tupiza to Uyuni
we were most of the time travelling alone and only passing the lots
of tourist doing the route the other way round. And we started with
the smallest sensation the tour offered and they got better all the
way rather than starting with the best (Salar de Uyuni) and then
becoming more "boring". First thing to see was the Laguna
Colorada and we were the first tourists there at this day. We saw
hundreds of flamingoes standing in the water and got closer to them
as everybody else as the fled from our approach and settled down some
hundred meters farer from the shore. (One of the things I can't
describe in detail are all the animals we saw. Anyway, if you want to
get an impression of our trip then visit http://www.tupizatours.com/ where you find
maps of the routes and some amazing photos.)

Then we went through another amazing desert with astonishing rock
formations, the most famous is the arbol de piedra, the tree of stone
that looks as if it and the background with colourful mountains had
been taken from one of Salvador Dali's paintings.

Finally we reached one of the region's few active volcanos. We did
not visit the small smoking crater but a landscape of lava from an
eruption some centuries ago. It looked as there had been a sea of
lava in five to ten meter high turbulent waves which solidified in
parts of a second. I have no idea how this landscape did form itself.

Maybe the most import advantage (though it did not really work out)
of our route was that we could choose whether we wanted to see a
sunrise or a sunset over the Salar de Uyuni, one of the biggest
salt-lakes of the world. It has a circumference of some 1200 km and
is at least 200 km wide. The normal tours from Uyuni arrive there
about lunchtime and see neihter the one nor the other. We decided to
see sunrise and were the first group with this decision since a year
as it meant that we had to get up at 2:30am to be at the Salar at
five as we wanted to be there before the horizon lit up. But
unfortunately this was the first time that rainy season hindered us
from getting another mindblowing experience as the sky was cloudy and
there was even a little rain. When the sun rose we just got a brief
glimpse of it that was enough to give us an impression how
spectacular this might have been.

Sometimes the lake offers a second phenomena we did not see either:
If there is some water on the salt plain you can stand in the middle
of it and the water reflects the sky so that you have the impression
of hovering in the middle of space or sky. Though our visit on the
lake was impressive from the first second. After the sunrise we went
to a little cactus covered island were we had breakfast. Did you know
that cacti grow only 1 cm each year and can reach a height of 12 m =
1200 years and more? Then we went back out on the lake and had a
lunch pick-nick in the middle of the salt, definitely the most
bizarre place I ever had lunch. Geraldo got us some amazing salt
crystals out of some holes in the topmost salt layers. Then we became
a bit silly, did some fun photos. The sun came out and we started to
play Frisbee with Keith's head for about an hour. Unfortunately we
and especially I did underestimate the power of the sun on the white
salt plain and I burned my face like never before. Fortunately now
everything is okay again an the red has turned into brown.

The next morning we continued by bus to Potosi, one of the oldest and
previously richest cities of South America. The town was founded in
1550 (+-) when the Spaniards discovered silver mines of the indios.
The bus ride was very scenic. But though this kind of travel is much
more comfortable than a jeep (buses are definitely Latin-American but
much better than in Guatemala) the problem is that you never have
time to stop, enjoy the view and make a nice photo. I tried to make a
few through the window and hope that one or two are good enough to
give an impression.

Potosi is with some 100.000 inhabitants and an altitude of some 4200m
the highest city of its size in the world. Huge parts of the town are
as ugly as you expect it in Latin-America but the centre is dominated
by an architecture that shows the towns Spanish history and passed
wealth. I haven't seen much of it yet but it is so impressive that
UNESCO declared the town as part of the World's Cultural Heritage. We
(that is Keith and I) took a room in a wonderful antique hotel. Today
the city is very poor as the worth of the metals and the
profitability of both mine and production processes has sunk
dramatically. The most important minerals in this region are silver,
lead, zinc and tin, the miners earn only some 125 USD a month ruining
their health (more details below).

As tomorrow is Sunday and only few miners will be working we did the
obligatory mine tour today and obviously it was the right decision to
chose the little more expansive (nevertheless cheap) agency that is
most recommended in the guide books. After the tour we met someone
who took another company and got much less compared to our adventure.
By the way: we had to sign that the company was not responsible for
injuries or death occurring during the tour.

The trip started quite harmless. A bus took us from the office to
another house were we got our equipment, waterproof jackets and
trousers, Wellingtons, a helmet and a headlight. Then we went to the
miners supermarket (some 6 sqm) where we bought dynamite (available
without restrictions) and softdrinks as presents for the minors.

Finally to the mine. The entrance is at 4325m and right from the
start we had to pass narrow passages so low that we had to walk bent
down deeply. Close to the entrance there was a small museum that
wasn't too informative. Then we visited El Tio, the uncle, a statue
of the devil, as mentioned above he and Pachamama (mother earth) are
the owners of the minerals and decide over the miners fate. Our guide
Pedro did explain us a lot about that and we gave a cigarette and
some alcohol to El Tio.

Then we visited a small tunnel on the so called first level where a
man was driving holes for the dynamite in the ore with nothing but
hammer and chisel. In other parts of the mine they use compressed air
but only were the mine ore is good enough to justify this afford. The
man was in his early forties and had worked in the mine for thirty
years, working in hot and damp air, with low oxygen and various
toxins in the air: arsenic, silicone (here the killer no. 1),
asbestos, carbon monoxide and dust. When he spoke or breathed we
could hear the sounds of his destroyed lungs and Pedro explained to
us that this man would be taken to the hospital in some one or two
years where he would die within another two years like most of the
miners. Despite this fact he continued working as he felt himself
useless spending his days at home and he had children to support.
Actually this man was one of the lucky ones as he worked for 30 years
in the mine before becoming, most of them die earlier. Much luckier
of course was our guide Pedro who had started to work in the mines at
the age of 10 and five years later got the possibility to work as a
tour guide spending much less times in the mines and not having to
work their. For all the miners we met we left dynamite and drinks as
presents.

Then we climbed down through the most narrow tunnels to the third
level, some 25m below. Due to the altitude, the exertion, the heat
and the gases (I was wearing a mask which hopefully protected me of
the worst but made the heat and the lack of oxygen even less
bearable) I felt for the first time of my life as if I couldn't
breath. In combination with the knowledge to be deep down in a
mountain this easily makes you panic and I had to force myself to
stand still for a moment, breath slowly, steadily and deeply until it
got better. Later I learned that there had been another exit nearby
and in the case of an incident we wouldn't have to return all the
way. Anyway it has been the hardest excursion I ever did.

We visited another group of miners who worked seven days a week.
Pedro explained us that there were a lot of fiestas these days and
the miners could not afford a day of if they wanted to finance the
alcohol etc. for the parties. They spend all of the day in the mine,
eat nothing but coca leaves which seems to be very justified
considering their working conditions. If I hadn't seen it myself I
couldn't believe it.

On the way back we visited a place where the ore was pulled up with
electric winches and Keith and I, as the only male tourist in our
group of six, were to help the minors shovelling the ore in the
rubber baskets used for the transport. Due to the close connection to
the outside the air was much better here and the work was
comparatively feasible though very, very exhausting.

Then we climbed up again, sometimes we had to move on hands and knees
through the narrow passages and were really happy to see the blinding
sunlight. Pedro showed us how to build a cracker from dynamite, a
fuse and a bag of ammonium nitrate, definitely the biggest and
strongest cracker I've ever seen. He lit the fuse and gave the bomb
to one of the girls before hiding himself behind the bus. Quite funny
for us, not for the girl. After some seconds and when about a third
of the fuse had gun and after we had taken some pictures of her, he
took the dynamite from her and put it in a hole in the hill, some 20m
from us. What an explosion, what a shock wave! The echo went round
the surrounding mountains for a few seconds.

In the evening we met again with Pedro for a beer, chatted a while
and learned some more interesting information, now we look forward to
a shower and our beds.

My further plans are still uncertain, I don't think that I will be
able to do Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia and Antarctica during this
journey but definitely I will go there. Slowly I am getting further
north than I ever planed, since yesterday I have the idea of taking a
cargo boat for some four days through the jungle in the northern
Bolivian lowlands. But till I get there some time will pass and my
plans are most likely to change again.

All the best from Potosi, Bolivia

Volker

Dear friends,

Thursday we came back from our four-day-trip, tired, sunburned and
full of impressions.

Monday morning we started at nine o´clock, five passangers on the two
rear benches of a jeep, our guide and driver Geraldo and our chef
Christina, his wife. We started from Tupiza at 3000m. The first day
went by with lots of amazing views. Bit by bit, we ascended following
the way Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid took after they robbed their
last money transport. We didn´t go to San Vincente, the place where
they were shot, because the only thing to see there is a graveyard
that looks like all other graveyards of the region and their grave is
yet to be identified.

Carmen had bought us a lot of supplies, including a bag of coca
leaves. The use is quite simple: tear off the stems, put them between
your cheek and the teeth and wait. Some people use natrium
bicarbonate but that is only to produce more salvia and is not very
healthy. The first times you do it your lips will become a little bit
numb, that's all you will feel in spite of a quite ugly taste.
Annotation: The recent riots in Boliva are also caused by the
presidents plans to cut down coca production. Due to international
politics, each farmer shall only be allowed to grow enough coca for
the local use and thereby stopping the cocaine production and export.
Though we all had some coca the height did affect us all, causing
headaches, difficulties breathing and nausea.

Till evening we had reached 4228m, and stayed in the little village /
town San Antonio de Lipez. Despite the altidude we played a very
amusing game of volleyball with the locals. A wonderful sunset,
moonrise and watching the moon and the stars (through the binoculars
Priti sold me as she is right now in the plane back to London. A
million thanks from me and all the people travelling with me, the
local people I meet) rounded up the day. I tell you that I will
never travel again without binoculars. Did you know that the three
stars making up the sword of Orion (at least that's the way I call
the stars under the belt) are actually binary stars and the middle
one is a nebula?

Travelling in a jeep with a driver is seemingly the best way to
travel a route like this one. With a rented car (which had to be 4x4
and you had to have a lot of off road experience) you would get lost
with almost certainty. In spite of not driving yourself you have the
possibility to stop (almost) every time you want to enjoy or make a
photo. Though we did not have as much time as Priti and I took,
probably we two would never have arrived, as we had to do some 200 km
of worst road each day. Most of the time we went through a high and
extremly dry but not very hot desert plateau. We all were surprised
by the comfort of this trip. We were only five tourists not the
possible six, which made a hell of a difference, the food was good
and the accommodations were acceptable. But we were up to eleven
hours each day on the road and were really tired each evening.

On the second day we reached the ghost town of Ruinas de San Antonio
after a few kilometres. Here the people had searched for gold and
silver since the sixteenth century, up to 5000 persons had been
living here. But the devil was controlling the town (that's at least
what the inhabitants thought) men disapeared or got blind overnight.
It is important to know, that for the locals mining is closely
connected to the devil who is owner of the minerals. Even today
miners sacrifice to the devil before entering the mines. Further down
you will find more information about this. After too much of this
strange stuff happened the people left San Antonio and moved to the
new San Antonio where we had spent the night. Still noble metals are
searched in the ruins but nobody spends the night there. They tried
to reseatle people there in the 70's but did not succeed.

We passed a few lagoons and an inactive volcano which I hardly
remember as the height had affected me and I had a headache and was
very tired. It was bad enough that I did not enter the thermal baths
we reached at 4400m. But I got better after taking a painkiller. We
saw the first flamingos then a highlight at highest altitude:
bubbling, stinking geysers or to be more exact boiling mud holes at
4955m. I never had seen something similar and it was a relatively
harmless way to get a impression of the earth's vulcanic power.

Once again day three started fantastic, as each of the days kind of
replaced the last one's impressions with new and even better ones.
This is one of the reasons why I can't describe every detail of this
route and rather than excerpts. As we were going from Tupiza to Uyuni
we were most of the time travelling alone and only passing the lots
of tourist doing the route the other way round. And we started with
the smallest sensation the tour offered and they got better all the
way rather than starting with the best (Salar de Uyuni) and then
becoming more "boring". First thing to see was the Laguna
Colorada and we were the first tourists there at this day. We saw
hundreds of flamingoes standing in the water and got closer to them
as everybody else as the fled from our approach and settled down some
hundred meters farer from the shore. (One of the things I can't
describe in detail are all the animals we saw. Anyway, if you want to
get an impression of our trip then visit http://www.tupizatours.com/ where you find
maps of the routes and some amazing photos.)

Then we went through another amazing desert with astonishing rock
formations, the most famous is the arbol de piedra, the tree of stone
that looks as if it and the background with colourful mountains had
been taken from one of Salvador Dali's paintings.

Finally we reached one of the region's few active volcanos. We did
not visit the small smoking crater but a landscape of lava from an
eruption some centuries ago. It looked as there had been a sea of
lava in five to ten meter high turbulent waves which solidified in
parts of a second. I have no idea how this landscape did form itself.

Maybe the most import advantage (though it did not really work out)
of our route was that we could choose whether we wanted to see a
sunrise or a sunset over the Salar de Uyuni, one of the biggest
salt-lakes of the world. It has a circumference of some 1200 km and
is at least 200 km wide. The normal tours from Uyuni arrive there
about lunchtime and see neihter the one nor the other. We decided to
see sunrise and were the first group with this decision since a year
as it meant that we had to get up at 2:30am to be at the Salar at
five as we wanted to be there before the horizon lit up. But
unfortunately this was the first time that rainy season hindered us
from getting another mindblowing experience as the sky was cloudy and
there was even a little rain. When the sun rose we just got a brief
glimpse of it that was enough to give us an impression how
spectacular this might have been.

Sometimes the lake offers a second phenomena we did not see either:
If there is some water on the salt plain you can stand in the middle
of it and the water reflects the sky so that you have the impression
of hovering in the middle of space or sky. Though our visit on the
lake was impressive from the first second. After the sunrise we went
to a little cactus covered island were we had breakfast. Did you know
that cacti grow only 1 cm each year and can reach a height of 12 m =
1200 years and more? Then we went back out on the lake and had a
lunch pick-nick in the middle of the salt, definitely the most
bizarre place I ever had lunch. Geraldo got us some amazing salt
crystals out of some holes in the topmost salt layers. Then we became
a bit silly, did some fun photos. The sun came out and we started to
play Frisbee with Keith's head for about an hour. Unfortunately we
and especially I did underestimate the power of the sun on the white
salt plain and I burned my face like never before. Fortunately now
everything is okay again an the red has turned into brown.

The next morning we continued by bus to Potosi, one of the oldest and
previously richest cities of South America. The town was founded in
1550 (+-) when the Spaniards discovered silver mines of the indios.
The bus ride was very scenic. But though this kind of travel is much
more comfortable than a jeep (buses are definitely Latin-American but
much better than in Guatemala) the problem is that you never have
time to stop, enjoy the view and make a nice photo. I tried to make a
few through the window and hope that one or two are good enough to
give an impression.

Potosi is with some 100.000 inhabitants and an altitude of some 4200m
the highest city of its size in the world. Huge parts of the town are
as ugly as you expect it in Latin-America but the centre is dominated
by an architecture that shows the towns Spanish history and passed
wealth. I haven't seen much of it yet but it is so impressive that
UNESCO declared the town as part of the World's Cultural Heritage. We
(that is Keith and I) took a room in a wonderful antique hotel. Today
the city is very poor as the worth of the metals and the
profitability of both mine and production processes has sunk
dramatically. The most important minerals in this region are silver,
lead, zinc and tin, the miners earn only some 125 USD a month ruining
their health (more details below).

As tomorrow is Sunday and only few miners will be working we did the
obligatory mine tour today and obviously it was the right decision to
chose the little more expansive (nevertheless cheap) agency that is
most recommended in the guide books. After the tour we met someone
who took another company and got much less compared to our adventure.
By the way: we had to sign that the company was not responsible for
injuries or death occurring during the tour.

The trip started quite harmless. A bus took us from the office to
another house were we got our equipment, waterproof jackets and
trousers, Wellingtons, a helmet and a headlight. Then we went to the
miners supermarket (some 6 sqm) where we bought dynamite (available
without restrictions) and softdrinks as presents for the minors.

Finally to the mine. The entrance is at 4325m and right from the
start we had to pass narrow passages so low that we had to walk bent
down deeply. Close to the entrance there was a small museum that
wasn't too informative. Then we visited El Tio, the uncle, a statue
of the devil, as mentioned above he and Pachamama (mother earth) are
the owners of the minerals and decide over the miners fate. Our guide
Pedro did explain us a lot about that and we gave a cigarette and
some alcohol to El Tio.

Then we visited a small tunnel on the so called first level where a
man was driving holes for the dynamite in the ore with nothing but
hammer and chisel. In other parts of the mine they use compressed air
but only were the mine ore is good enough to justify this afford. The
man was in his early forties and had worked in the mine for thirty
years, working in hot and damp air, with low oxygen and various
toxins in the air: arsenic, silicone (here the killer no. 1),
asbestos, carbon monoxide and dust. When he spoke or breathed we
could hear the sounds of his destroyed lungs and Pedro explained to
us that this man would be taken to the hospital in some one or two
years where he would die within another two years like most of the
miners. Despite this fact he continued working as he felt himself
useless spending his days at home and he had children to support.
Actually this man was one of the lucky ones as he worked for 30 years
in the mine before becoming, most of them die earlier. Much luckier
of course was our guide Pedro who had started to work in the mines at
the age of 10 and five years later got the possibility to work as a
tour guide spending much less times in the mines and not having to
work their. For all the miners we met we left dynamite and drinks as
presents.

Then we climbed down through the most narrow tunnels to the third
level, some 25m below. Due to the altitude, the exertion, the heat
and the gases (I was wearing a mask which hopefully protected me of
the worst but made the heat and the lack of oxygen even less
bearable) I felt for the first time of my life as if I couldn't
breath. In combination with the knowledge to be deep down in a
mountain this easily makes you panic and I had to force myself to
stand still for a moment, breath slowly, steadily and deeply until it
got better. Later I learned that there had been another exit nearby
and in the case of an incident we wouldn't have to return all the
way. Anyway it has been the hardest excursion I ever did.

We visited another group of miners who worked seven days a week.
Pedro explained us that there were a lot of fiestas these days and
the miners could not afford a day of if they wanted to finance the
alcohol etc. for the parties. They spend all of the day in the mine,
eat nothing but coca leaves which seems to be very justified
considering their working conditions. If I hadn't seen it myself I
couldn't believe it.

On the way back we visited a place where the ore was pulled up with
electric winches and Keith and I, as the only male tourist in our
group of six, were to help the minors shovelling the ore in the
rubber baskets used for the transport. Due to the close connection to
the outside the air was much better here and the work was
comparatively feasible though very, very exhausting.

Then we climbed up again, sometimes we had to move on hands and knees
through the narrow passages and were really happy to see the blinding
sunlight. Pedro showed us how to build a cracker from dynamite, a
fuse and a bag of ammonium nitrate, definitely the biggest and
strongest cracker I've ever seen. He lit the fuse and gave the bomb
to one of the girls before hiding himself behind the bus. Quite funny
for us, not for the girl. After some seconds and when about a third
of the fuse had gun and after we had taken some pictures of her, he
took the dynamite from her and put it in a hole in the hill, some 20m
from us. What an explosion, what a shock wave! The echo went round
the surrounding mountains for a few seconds.

In the evening we met again with Pedro for a beer, chatted a while
and learned some more interesting information, now we look forward to
a shower and our beds.

My further plans are still uncertain, I don't think that I will be
able to do Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia and Antarctica during this
journey but definitely I will go there. Slowly I am getting further
north than I ever planed, since yesterday I have the idea of taking a
cargo boat for some four days through the jungle in the northern
Bolivian lowlands. But till I get there some time will pass and my
plans are most likely to change again.

All the best from Potosi, Bolivia

Volker
______________________________________________________________________________