33 - Sucre, Potosí, Tupiza

Casey and I parted ways after La Paz. She headed back to Peru, and I headed on an overnight bus southeast to Sucre.
In Sucre I checked out some dinosaur bones and footprints.
This is a picture of some dinosaur bones.

The dino tracks used to be flat, but then some mountains formed, so then they were vertical on this slab of rock. Kinda hard to see in this photo, but trust me... they´re there.

On my dino tour trip I met Robert from Holland. He was a really great guy, and I ended up spending the next week with him traveling all around Bolivia. Together we went to a small town about 65km outside of Sucre with a huge Sunday market. The market was hustling and bustling with all sorts of people and things to buy. Man alive was it different from our supermarkets.








Next stop on my Bolivian travels was the small mining town of Potosí. Robert and I signed up for a tour of the mines, and the next morning we were decked out in our helmets, gumboots, and yellow mining suits ready to head into the mines.
At first the mines were really cold, and I could see my own breath, but as we got deeper and deeper into the tunnels it got hotter and hotter until we were all dripping with sweat. Meanwhile the whole time we were crouching and ducking and crawling as we moved through the long, narrow, dusty tunnels. I hit my head on the rocky ceiling many times.


We stopped at one point to have a miners´drink of this stuff that was 96% alcohol.
As you can tell from my reaction it was disgusting. As the liquid moved down from my mouth down my throat and into my stomach it felt like my insides were covered with gasoline and then lit on fire. I don´t know why the miners drink it.

After our ¨drink¨we continued on into the mines sweating and squeezing our way through the tunnels until all of a sudden there was an urgent ¨Hurry hurry!¨from our guide. We raced ahead and got out of the way just in time for four men to race by us working like horse mules pushing and pulling a two ton cart filled with rocks and boulders.



Throughout the next two hours we saw many more miners huffing and puffing their way past us. I have never seen such difficult work or seen people work under such extreme conditions in my life. No wonder they need a 96% alcohol drink by the end of the day!


When we finally got out of the mines, and I could stand up straight again, we got to blow up a stick of dynamite. When it blew up it was incredibly loud, and even though it was over 100 meters away the power of the explosion was so strong the wind from it hit me in the face and shook my clothes. Intense.

After Potosí Robert and I took an overnight bus to the cowboy town of Tupiza. Tupiza is known for its multi-colored mountains, rock formations, and all the canyons. We took a 5-hour horse ride through it all, and by-golly-gee was it beautiful. Check it out...
Did I mention that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid from the American western film were finally caught and killed right near Tupiza?
A true cowgirl.
Suns out guns out!


I felt like Simba from the Lion King when a herd came running down the mountain into the canyon below. Except that they were goats instead of wildabeests...and I´m not a lion.

Sucre, Potosí, and Tupiza proved to be towns filled with great adventure. Next stop... Uyuni!