Framedlight

We have a saying in our family that every holiday has to have a pointless walk. One that starts out with good intentions, but never gets to where you are supposed to be going and is in some way difficult. On the last day I spent with Mairi and Naomi we intended to walk to some waterfalls outside of the city of Sucre. We had heard that at one time the place was fairly dangerous and there had been robberies, although it had been cleaned up since. Nevertheless we decided to take our swimming things, the minimum of money and no cameras. So no pictures (hurrah I hear you cry). We had to walk down to one of the local markets from where we caught a bus out to a small village. The day was hot and cloudless but we intended to walk to the waterfalls and stay there until it got cooler. At first we were not sure which way to go, so Naomi asked one of the locals and we were put on the right track. It involved walking down quite a steep hill to another village further on, where the falls were sup...

Sucre was a pleasant place to chill out in. On the Tuesday morning Naomi was not feeling too good, she had a chest infection. I realised that I was flying home on Friday and needed some presents to take with me, so Mairi and I hit the shops in Sucre. We found one really nice shop called T'Ika where the gentleman was helpful and the clothes were all bought in from local crafts people. We spent a lot of money there and I treated myself to an alpaca cardigan. When we returned to the hostel Naomi felt a bit better so we took a bus out to a place where the side of a hill has been excavated by a cement factory and a mass of dinosaur footprints have been uncovered. We caught a tourist open top  bus from a corner by the cathedral and went far out of the town, through an area filled with lorries and transport companies. Here are some pictures taken en route. The cliff showing the footprints was pretty high and there are supposed to be around 5000 prints. One of the s...

The 4th May was a Saturday. We had wanted to do a tour of one of the mines in the afternoon as then we could look in to some of the churches in the morning (they are all shut Saturday afternoon), but we were told that there was a football match on in the afternoon and no one would be working down there. Mining is so central to Potosi that mine tours are on the tourist agenda. I felt first of all that it was exploitative as the conditions in Cerro Rico are renowned but I felt more comfortable with it as time went on. Cerro Rico has been tunnelled for silver since the 16th century and the way things are done has not altered much since then. It is such a dangerous operation that every mine (and there are 5,000 entrances on the mountain, not all in use) has its resident Tio, or statue of the devil who has to be appeased for the miner to be kept safe. Above ground, the miners are Roman Catholic, below ground darker forces come in to play. Most miners can only expect to work for 20 yea...