Tupiza
All on my own again now as the others went up to Sucre on Tuesday and I decided to hang on in Potosi till wednesday and then endure the 8 hr night bus to Tupiza arriving at 4 in the morning. Tupiza is near to where Butch Cassidy and the sundance kid met their untimely demise. In honour of the two I took a 5 hour horse trek through the desert yesterday and it was real wild west territory, red rocked canyons and cactus everywhere. The best bit was galloping back along the rail road shouting like cowboys. Last night I watched Butch cassidy and the sundance kid in the hotel for the second time in 2 weeks, well worth a second viewing.

Click here to see photos of the Salt Flats and the Silver mines

Potosi
Saturday night was a great change from makeshift desert food as we went to Kactus Restaurant in Uyuni and has nice chilean wine, Llama steak and best of all heating! Our group had snowballed from 6 to 15 people including one Irish girl, they're like busses really I don`t see any for 3 months and then all of the sudden I meet 2 in one week. A great night was had by all. SO we got upearly yesterday morning to catch the rickety, shakey bus to Potosi, it broke down about every 15 mins making the journey through the desert an allday affair. All I could do when I arived was sleep. Another early start this morning to go to the silver mines. We first stopped off at the miners market to pick up gifts for the miners, it`s really crazy what is legal here. We bought coca leaves, coca cigarettes (for that real cocaine taste), pure alcohol 98% for the miners to fight of the thought of evil spirits and last but definitly not least Dynamite, to have a few explosions. The mines are a co-operative, so whatever a miner finds is his, there is no safety standards or precautions and they say that the average miner only lives for about 10 years after he enters the mine. The conditions there can only be described as medieval, with no modern tools just crude hand tools and lots of dynamite used indescriminately. All this for an average income of about $3 per day. All the same we had great fun climbing through tiny holes in the dark with our carbon head lamps and their naked flames. so I`ve spent today uploading som eof the photos and I`ll put in a link in a min.