The (former) biggest and richest city in the world - Potosí

This was the highest place we had stayed at so far at about 4000 metres and you could certainly feel it on the cold windswept plateau.  Behind the city is the volcanic Cerro Rico or rich mountain which contained more silver than anywhere else in the world.  The Spanish extracted vast amounts of it using slave labour which caused a large part of the demographic collapse of the indigenous population. It is estimated that 8 million people died in the mines.

At its height it really was the biggest and richest city in the world but now its only superlative is highest city in the world.  Like mining communities elsewhere once the mine goes there is really no reason for anyone to be there.  There are still loads of miners working in Victorian conditions to extract silver, zinc and tin but there is no refining capability there so it gets shipped off as dried sludge containing 2% silver.

There is a big tourist operation to take groups underground so I succumbed and Verity went to see the old Royal mint Casa de La Moneda.

You get dressed up in all the gear and get dropped off at the miners market to buy little gifts for the miners underground like soft drinks or bags of coca leaves or sticks of dynamite (I kid you not). Then you see the disgusting plant where they pulverise the ore and use chemicals to get the mix to be frothy and float off the concentrated metals (well 2%).

Then it was underground to see the mine.  You walk along the narrow passages with the roof held up by not much with sulphurous air and stumbling over the rails.  They are still working mines so groups of men work certain seams hoping they will strike it lucky. The guide was an ex miner who had got out and set up this particular tour. 

It's an interesting debate about how you could improve the lives of the miners. They say they could bring in modern technology to extract most of what is left but that would be a rapid process that would spell the end of the mining in a short time.  They seem to want to go on in the same old way which hasn't really changed for 100 years. Not a particularly comfortable experience but an insight into what I might have been up to if I had been born a hundred years earlier in the Durham coalfield.

Meanwhile Verity was seeing what happened to the precious metals in the old days. There are fantastic remains of coins and religious works of art collected from around the area.

We weren't sorry to leave Potosí which had seemed like a God forsaken place not helped by lashings of rain throughout our stay - but the end result of the unseasonably early rain will be revealed later......

A wild van ride through the mountains towards the salt flats seasoned with views of llamas and tiny hamlets.  In the middle of nowhere with a flat tyre, spare wheel and no jack we were lucky to flag down a car with a jack.  Then upwards and onwards through an increasingly arid and flat landscape to Uyuni.