Took a bumpy ride from Uyuni to Potosi, a UNESCO world heritage site and reportedly the world´s highest metropolis (100,000 people) at 13,000 feet. Potosi was a major silver producing center and singlehandedly kept Spain´s coffers brimming for a few hundred years. Today it´s not as rich but still richly fascinating.
We spent a day doing Internet, getting laundry cleaned (what´s that smell? oh, I think they use kerosene) and walking the fascinating market and church squares. We stayed in a rambling mansion sort of place, up in a turret, which was buffetted by mountain winds all night. In the early evening there was shooting and I ran down to ask the hotel clerk if it was the revolution, and he said, Oh no, not in Potosi.
Early the next morning we took a six hour ride to Oruro. Oruro is nothing and certainly not scenic but the ride to La Paz was 8 hours and we did not want to risk a late arrival. The journey was marked mostly by a trail of bodies freshly killed in rather horrific single car accidents. The air felt empty over the bodies.
We checked into the nicest place we could find in Oruro. A truly disgusting place though I´ll never tire of markets like that town´s -- sprawling, with everything under the sun for sale.
Took a morning ride to La Paz, the route traced by staggering volcanoes. La Paz comes as a surprise ... you don´t see it until you are looking down on it. It falls spectacularly from 13,500 feet to 12,500 feet, the buildings hanging onto steep canyon walls and a ginormous volcano looming beyond it.
We took a taxi across town (only our second taxi ride of the trip) to a smaller bus area and took a minibus to Copacabana -- not, not THAT Copacabana but another one. Very quiet, very cheap, and only 8 miles from Peru.
We´re assessing our next stage at this point.
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