Day 43 - Tues 10.05.10
WE GO TO SEE POTOSÍ

Today we set out for lovely Potisí, known for its breathtaking colonial architecture, being the highest populated city in the world (a whopping 4,090 meters above sea level), and having once been the richest city in the Americas due to its incredibly prolific silver mines (which prompted a city to be founded at such a ridiculous altitude to begin with).

Apparently, the Potosi silver industry practically single-handedly financed the Spanish empire between the mid-1500´s and 1800´s, until the source, Cerro Rico, began to run dry. Locals continue to mine in small, miner-run co-ops at their own expense, but profits and lucky strikes are few and far between. Guided tours of the mines are offered by some agencies, mainly as a way to see first-hand the atrocious (and, in most cases, eventually lethal) working conditions that remain the legacy of colonial slave labor, but we opted out of it (see yesterday´s post). Also, we´d rather not contract silicosis, thankyouverymuch.

But before we got to the city itself, we experienced our first case of real travellers´ paranoia. We hopped in a cab at the bus station and gave the driver our destination, but instead of going downhill into what we thought was the city center, he turned up and into the surrounding hills. About 15 minutes into what was supposed to be a 5 minute ride, we began to wonder where we were going. The driver seemed to ignore our questions, or at best answer in vague references to another neighborhood somewhere over the hill. The streets seemed to get more and more deserted and we finally got worried. We began to stuff our wallets into our underwear, and Joseph even got out his pocket knife [Joseph´s note: it is a hunting/camping knife]. What harm could a lanky Jewish boy from Charleston, SC, possibly do with a pathetic little pocket knife, you ask? So did he. [Joseph´s note: again, hunting/camping knife, and it´s quite sharp]

Eventually, and just as the driver had said, we began to re-enter civilization and soon found ourselves in downtown Potosí, safe and sound. Joseph put away the blade. It appears that the bus terminal was moved to a new building outside the city, and was no longer a few blocks from the center, as it was in March of this year, when our guidebook was published.

The driver never knew it, but the hefty tip he received was our manner of apology for wrongfully thinking he was an ax murderer. Sorry dude.

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Day 42 - Mon 10.04.10
MY FIRST DAY AT WORK

Shirking off other potential responsibilities, Joseph, accompanied as always by his trusty sidekick, enjoy the good life in Sucre. By ¨good life in Sucre¨ we mean being in Sucre on a day when anything at all is open.

We were first captivated by the lure of the Museum of Human Anatomy. Imagine a large room filled with a mix of wax body parts and organs, larger-than-life diagrams, an array of human bones, and some very unhappy looking ex-organs floating in formaldehyde. We were especially taken with the dignified portraits of Sucre´s old school medical establishment and the museum´s large display of turn-of-the-century medical tools.

Next up: dinosaurs. Opting out of the touristy ¨Dino Bus,¨ we instead hopped on combi (bus) #4, rode it 30 minutes to the end of the line, and walked up the hill to the hilariously awesome Parque Cretacico. Long story short, workers excavating at a Bolivian quarry stumbled upon a bunch of dinosaur footprints some 20 years ago, and there´s now a dinosaur theme park to accompany the viewing of the footprints. Mind you, this is no ordinary mishmash of dinosaur footprints, but it is rather the largest number of dinosaur footprints of any site worldwide (some several thousand). Furthermore, what was once a muddy horizontal surface is now a completely vertical wall, courtesy of insane geologic forces, so that the footprints are suspended sideways hundreds of feet up on an enormous vertical cliff. From the park you look across the quarry up at the the kilometer-long cliff and can follow tracks for hundreds of meters up and down the now-vertical surface. Quite imposing. We appreciated the life size dinosaur models inside the Parque Cretacico, but we did find that the looped soundtrack of dinosaur grunts being blasted throughout the park made it somewhat difficult to hear our guide.


Back in the city later on, we paid a sundown visit to Monasterio San Felipe Neri. New rule for the trip: visit monasteries whenever possible. The tour took us up the to the roof of the monastery, where beautiful tile construction covers every structure, including the cathedral. (Have you ever walked on top of a cathedral before?) The views of the brilliant-white colonial city at sunset inspired much awwww. Our tour guide liked us so much that she also took us into the crypt.

Night time: a local not-for-locals restaurant was showing The Devil´s Miner, a documentary about a young boy working in the mines of nearby Potosí. As we were heading to Potosí the next day, we were lucky to catch the film before going. The documentary highlighted the horrific working conditions in the 450-year old mines, the sad economic situation that forces the folks of Potosí into a life of mining, and the painful lung diseases that follows, in most cases killing them. The film also convinced us to not attempt a visit to the mines, which surprisingly is a popular tourist activity we{d been hearing about from other travellers for weeks. For a brief moment, we were forced to reflect on the purpose of our largely self-indulgent, self-obsessed, and entertainment-seeking vacation, and we decided to pass up on what we thought would be a voyeristic and even dangerous foray into the mines. Of course, we also acknowledge fully that in rushing through without stopping to learn about such a significant part of local life, we consciously chose to avoid exposure to an upsetting reality. We felt, and still feel, somewhat conflicted about the whole thing.

And it was evening, and it was morning, the umpteenth day.

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Day 41 - Sun 10.03.10
I KNOW LES LUTHIERS, AND YOU, SIRS, ARE NO LES LUTHIERS

So it turns out that everything is closed in Sucre, Bolivia on a Sunday. It being difficult to find much of anything to occupy ourselves, we instead let ourselves get interviewed by a Unitedstatesofamerican grad student researching... travellers masking their cultural identities in Bolivia. Joseph revealed that he usually lets Victoria speak for him, and that he was wearing a Roots vest (Canadian brand, mind you). Ergo, nobody will ever know he is Unitedstatesofamerican.

The afternoon centered around plans to rent go-carts at the massive fair going on in Sucre´s lovely city park. Our dreams were shattered, however, when we were informed that we were too big to ride the go-carts and that they were solely to be used for the entertainment of children. Efforts to temporarily kidnap a Bolivian child were unavailing.

In honor of our anniversary -- 3rd... or 4th... or 8th or something -- we opted to sample Sucre´s finest cultural offerings by attending the theatre. Sucre´s performance space is a lovely opera house type affair, very impressive building, very old school, very stylish. Approaching the ticket booth that afternoon, we were informed that a popular Bolivian comedy troupe was performing that evening. We were promised that the show would involve a little bit of music, a lot of humor, but ¨no politics, nothing controversial.¨ Not exactly Puccini at the Met, but, then again, we didn´t really have the right clothes anyway. Somewhat skeptical of the rainbow-&-balloon designs on the billboard, Victoria asked if the show wasn´t really meant for children. The ticket seller promised that it was not solely for children, and that it was actually very much in the style of the lofty literary humor of Les Luthiers. Some of you may know of Les Luthiers, the famous Argentine group known for its comedic musical satire, whitty puns, and homemade instruments. This statement made us feel a bit more optimistic about the show. Victoria´s dear old Papa also happened to have been one of the original founding members of said group, so this reference seemed doubly reassuring.

Well... neither of us have ever walked out of any show before. We don´t give up easily. We´ll sit though an Eddie Murphy movie just to feel like we´re not quitters. The first tip off should have been that the ticket man who sold us on the show also seemed to be the ticket-taker, sound man, stage director, and emcee. Bad sign. In Unitedstatesofamerican parlance, it was all a bit ¨ghetto.¨ The second tip off was that the average audience member was a very unhappy-looking 5 year old. The third tip off was that the show absolutely sucked. We will spare you the details, but suffice it to say that we left at intermission. There goes our track record.