Sucre, Bolivia

This has been a busy week since we decided to go to a Spanish school for 6 hours a day. It was a really great experience though, and I think we had the best Spanish teacher that we have ever had. Before classes started we decided to backtrack a little and go back to Potosí, the highest city in the world, to see the mines there. We were planning on going to an ancient festival in a very small town 3 hours from Potosí called the Tinku festival. People come in from the countryside for the weekend once a year to dance, sing, and fight. The people save up any agruments over land, women or anything else and duke it out during the festival. Of course Nick was really excited to see this, but the tour agency changed their itinerary so we were not able to go.
We returned to Sucre last Sunday and moved in with our host family. They were extremely, super nice!!!! We ate breakfast and lunch with them everyday. The lunches were really good!! On Saturday the 10th, Nick started feeling kind of crappy. By the late afternoon he was vomiting and had horrible diarrhea. I went to the pharmacy and they recommended he go to the hospital. So our host family helped me take him to the hospital down the street. He had a temperature of 103.1 F. They gave him an IV and waited for his fever to break. The next day we returned to the hospital for a blood test, which showed he had a moderate infection...probably from eating food off the street. They gave him some medication, and now two days later he is much better. This is the amazing part...the examination, IV, blood test, and medication all cost a total of $40. The examination alone cost just $2. I just can´t believe that!!! All is well now, and we are headed to Cochabamba tonight.
Sucre-the judicial and constitutional capital of Bolivia. La Paz is the administrative capital. This has proven to be a very nice city!!!

The Dino Tracks right outside of Sucre. A cement company found the longest trail of dinosaur tracks in the world here 25 years ago, which were 225 meters long. This is a brontosaurus that they built as an exact replica of the tracks they found in Patagonia. Can you see me standing under her?

Nick standing under a T-Rex. They have never found any evidence that this type of T-Rex lived in South America, but here is a replica.

Another picture of Sucre from the Dino place.

This is the wall that is covered with more than 5,000 footprints from 400 different dinosaurs. This was a lake at one time. So the dinosaurs came to water from the lake and sediments covered their foot prints. As plates shifted and the mountains began to form it pushed this area up forming the vertical wall. UNESCO declared the wall a world hertiage site this year, and they plan to cover the whole wall in a plastic to preserve it from erosion.

A closer picture of some of the tracks.

A full picture of the wall. There is a truck on the left hand side of the picture to give a scale of how big the wall really is.

The Cerro Rico in Potosí. This hill has been mined since the 16th century, and was once the largest silver mine in the world making the city the richest city for about 100 years. They used to make black slaves and natives work in the mine for 20 hours straight. Millions of people have died here; that is why they call it the hill that eats men. Now they mine zinc, copper, and tin from the mine. This hill is extremely dangerous since it is pretty much like swiss cheese inside. The miners just dig where they want, and there are no proper safety measures. The town is just waiting for the day when the hill caves in. If you want to see a very sad documentary about this hill just watch ¨The Devil´s Miner¨.

The city of Potosí, the highest city in the world at 4,070 meters (13,353 feet).

The miners believe that God´s powers stop at the entrance of the mine, and once they enter they are in the Devil´s domain. Every mine entrance has a shrine to the devil that they give offerings of coca leaves, cigarettes, and alcohol. They call the devil ¨Tio¨ because in Quecha they couldn´t pronounce the letter ¨D¨, the Europeans said the devil was their Dio (god) but they could not say that so they called him ¨Tio¨(uncle).

Two miners hard at work, with a huge hunk of coca leaves in their check.

A miner drilling holes to lay dynamite.

One of the shafts Nick had to climb down.

Before Nick went into the mine, we went to the miner´s market where we bought gifts for the miners. They sold coca leaves, soda, cigarettes, 96% alcohol, ammonium nitrate, and dynamite. The guide let us buy a little extra dynamite to play with. Here he is lighting a bag of dynamite wrapped in ammonium nitrate. It made a good explosion. It is crazy that anyone can buy dynamite right off the street for $1.

Our Spanish school.

Our wonderful teacher David. He taught us so much about Spanish, Bolivia, and South American culture. He loves learning, and knows 6 languages!!

The view of the city from our host family´s house.

Our host family´s house. It was huge with 10-15 bedrooms!! We got our own room with our own bathroom! It was really nice!!