The bus that was to take us to Potosí seemed a lot nicer than what I had imagine. Small, but clean, with nice reclinable seats and no sheep or chickens on board, as I had heard in many stories. The only difference from other buses I had taken was that luggage was place on top, and not underneath, and that it was considerable higher, probably to get across the muddy roads when the rainy season kicks in (only 5% of all Bolivian roads are paved). It looked like a 4x4 bus.
But of course, those were my first impressions. As soon as we started the trip, some of the stereotypes of Bolivian road travel turned real: people would jump on and off the bus at any point (sometimes without waiting for the bus to stop) until even the aisles were completely filled, we had to change a flat tyre 20 minutes after begining our trip and we had to leave the bus about 10 km. before reaching Potosi because the teachers (yes, them again) had blocked the road with rocks.
So we took our bags and walked with them across the blockade which was surprisingly not hostile to pedestrians. Once on the other side, we had to take a taxi (shared with as many people as the driver managed to fit in) to the city.
Unfortunately, our driver seemed to be exclusively dedicated to the "bus terminal-blockade-bus terminal" route (a quite profitable one, I believe), so he refused to take us to our hostel and we had to take another taxi that had to take several detours around Potosí's streets to avoid further protests inside the city.
But despite of our arrival incidents, Potosí is a much nicer city than the dull and depressing one I expected to find. The streets were very lively and packed with people, full of architectonic jewels and there are quite a few nice places to stay and eat, where you can try the delicious grilled llama steaks, as I did. However, the fact that Potosí is the highest city in the world (4,070 m), interesting as it is, it also means that walking along the steep streets is extremely tiring and that it gets quite cold, specially now that the winter has begun.
When the silver mines were at full production, Potosí was the New York of the Spanish Empire. It was the largest city in the continent, and even larger than the main European metropolis, such as Paris or Seville. In fact, Potosí is probably one of the few cities in the world that had more habitants 300 years ago than it does today. In Spain, "vale un Potosí" (it's worth a Potosí) is still used today to refer to something of outstanding value.
The heritage from that period is reflected on the large number of fine colonial buildings spreaded throughout the city (UNESCO has catalogued over 2,000 of them), which make Potosí resemble some of the most monumental cities in Southern Spain (Úbeda or Trujillo come to mind).
Potosí also has one of the few museums I truly enjoyed visiting (those that know me well know I'm not very fond of these "agglomerated collections of artistic items"): La Casa de la Moneda (The Mint House), claimed to be a replica of Spain's Escorial Monastery. Putting aside the simplistic and theatrical Spanish-bashing comments that you expect to get on any guided tour on this side of the continent (our guide said that "two bridges could be built from South-America to Madrid: one with the bones of the people murdered by the Spaniards and another one with the gold stolen by them"), the visit was quite interested. We went through the whole old coin production process, from the melting of silver in standard ingots to the minting of the coins. We saw the ovens, the ingot-thinnering machines (brought from Spain), the minting tools and even some of the safety trunks used by the Spaniards to transport the coins, some with truly ingenious mechanisms.
The funny aspect of the museum is that since they seemed to have plenty of room left, they decided to incorporate a few additional items: old Indian skulls, two natural mummies of Spanish babies, all the religious items of one church that had been closed and, my personal favorite, the skeleton of a whale donated by a German scientist.
Our guide finished the tour mentioning a quite ironic fact: Potosí used to produce coins for the Spanish Empire, but now it is Spain that manufactures all Bolivian coins. It's incredible how twisted history can be.
Another amusing fact about Potosí (well, Bolivia in general) is the public transportation system. In Potosí, there are more buses (vans, actually) than private cars. Each of them belongs to a different person, so competition is fierce even within the same route.
Each van is equiped with a little kid (usually a family member of the driver) that shouts the destinations of the bus in a very loud and unintelligible way (even for me, a native Spanish speaker). I ignore the real reason for this practice as the destinations are clearly written on the front of the van, but my guess is that it's either to beat competitors (among all the noise, the louder screamer has a better chance of you noticing him) or to inform those passengers that can't read (I don't know the illiteracy level among Bolivians, but I presume is significantly higher than in most neighboring countries). But whatever the reason, I can asure you is that it's really annoying, specially at rush hour.
But despite all the attractions I just mentioned, the main reason why most travellers visit Potosí is a different one: visiting the old silver mines. And, of course, I was one of them. But that experience was so overwhelming that it deserves a posting on its own.
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