Kepfram & Ellie's Travel Journal

Potosí - the highest city in the world at 4,090 meters (13,400 feet). Although we´re mostly accustomed to these heights - having been above 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) since we arrived in Cuzco on April 10th (with the brief exception of our 2 days at Machu Picchu) - it´s still a little hard to climb the hills.
Potosí is a colonial city: Spanish architecture, cobbled or tiled streets, clay roofs, stone and adobe walls - no heat in most buildings, but really thick walls kept our hostel room warm all night.
This town was built as a base for silver mining & the minting of coins (at one time Spain´s coins were minted in Potosí, although ironically now Bolivia´s coins are minted in Spain....). Due to the labor costs and terrible conditions of mining in the area, Bolivia imported African slaves in the 1500 & 1600s. Interestingly the people around here seem to never have seen a real live black person, and there is a LOT of staring and the kids openly gaping & pointing when Kepfram walks by. Several Bolivians have even asked Kepfram if he´s visiting from Africa (I wonder what happened to the former slave population if the locals can´t imagine anywhere else a black person could be from!!).
We didn´t visit the mines (although most tourists seem to, the ones we talked to told us they were hot and miserable and that 2 hours seemed forever). We did take a day trip to the nearby towns of Tarapaya and Miraflores - both with hot springs!! We stopped 1st at the volcanic lake "Ojo del Inca" near Tarapaya - it´s on top of a hill in almost the middle of nowhere - gorgeous, but not hot enough for Kepfram at only 25 C (77 F). So we moved on to Miraflores, a town that seems to exist for it´s 10 or so pools that have captured the hot volcanic water. Some of the pools are full of screaming children in buildings with little ventilation and the smell of urine, however the one we eventually found had a lots of air circulating under the roof and some really nice hot 30 C (86 F) water.
We met a family here and I played PT to the father/grandfather who´d broken his wrist in a fall only 2 weeks before (apparently they´d taken off the cast after a few days because it was too tight, and the doctor had sent him to PT instead!). He wasn´t tolerating the exercises the PT had him doing, so he´s skipped his appointment and gone to soak in the pools instead..... Later we talked for a while about many things including Bolivian history and politics (Kepfram´s Spanish is getting really good - he´s generally able to understand what people tell him and he can pretty much get his point across when he wants to say something).
The countryside around Potosí reminds me of the south west US - red earth, green shrub, rocky hills stripped with sediment - the exception: large, freely roaming pigs eating trash out of the river that flowed through the town of Miraflores.....
On our way back to Potosí a group of young Bolivians chatted up Kepfram, apparently they wanted their picture taken with the exotic gringo.....
On our last morning in town, while walking to the bus station will all our stuff on our backs I tripped and fell and sprained my ankle..... We´re on our way to what´s supposed to be one of the highlights of South America (the Salar de Uyuni) - I hope I can walk........

Ellie