After the miraculous lost-and-found story of my passport in Bolivia, I knew it was time to bid Bolivia farewell. Replacing my Canon Ixus 700 for the 3rd time(yes, it's true), Senor Rudy from my hostal was so kind as to accompany me to the black market street, Calle Eloy Salmon, to shop around and to my great surprise, I got it at about the same price back home. Whoopee!!! Getting my life back with a new diary, a new camera, a new bag, a new dictionary and all, I felt ready to embark on my disrupted journey once again like a brand new traveller.
While waiting for my credit cards to arrive from Singapore, I visited Sucre and Potosi to kill some time. Sucre was hugely disappointing with its "not-so-white" colonial town feel and I was almost bored to tears walking through the town. Sucre is officially the capital of Bolivia though La Paz is the de facto capital with its huge commercial hub-a-dub-dub activities. The view from the La Recoleta over the city was great and it was wonderful eating melted ice-cream at the Cafe Mirador while soaking up some sunshine and the city view. I was a tad disappointed when my good offer to do some volunteer work came in the form of volunteering my time as a waitress in the cafe...serving melted ice-cream nonetheless. Hmmm....the idea was nice(to do volunteer work, not serve ice-cream) but a pity since I feel the effort is not greatly appreciated by mankind in return. (screw it!)
If ever you are in Sucre and are a big Dinosaur fan, then perhaps you can be a sucker and pay some money to go on the "cheesy Dinotruck"(exact words by Lonely Planet) and see the world's largest paleonthologist site featuring what else but Dinosaur footprints! Whoohoo!!! The footprint tracks are laid across a limstone layered platform in a cement factory, discovered by the workers about 10years ago and since then has been certified by dino-crazy scientists and researchers to be the world's largest. If you can actually see the prints and identify them as either by a herbivorous or a carnivorous, then I must say your eyesight is perfecto and you can sign up as a pilot. These limestone walls are like 8-10 storeys high and I had to squint my chinese eyes so hard just to make out the footprints! Jesus!
Potosi is famed for being the highest city in the world and silver mining, of course. In the 16th century, silver from Cerro Rico(rich mountain) made Potosi one of the biggest and richest city in the Americas, rivalled only by the likes of Paris and London. Though Potosi's wealth is now only a distant memory away, I was encouraged by roving reports form other travellers on how great the mine tours were, and so I went. It was 2 November when I arrived and the miners in town are out of the mines(thank god), celebrating All Saint's Day with good food and wine, depriving me of an opportunity to go down "The Mouth of Hell". Described as a tour not meant for "wimps or woosies", the mine entrances are above 4000m and you will be crouching for about 4hours walking through the myriad of tunnels, breathing in noxious gases and witnessing miners from a 3rd world country working in appalling conditions in the 21st century, in temperatures of above 40degrees celsius for long hours. Somehow, I am kind glad I didn't go for the tour in the end.
Just one last bit of sight-seeing in La Paz before I leave the city, I went for the city tour atop a touristic bright red roofless bus. Perfect target for terrorists, I say. Rambling through Circuit A in downtown city, I learnt some interesting facts about the city I never knew before from my guidebooks(though I can hardly remember them now). The Mirador Kiri Kiri was a great stop-over and I took in every bit of the city view from the central commercial areas right up to El Alto and the peaks of Mt Illimani. Circuit B took us to the Zona Sur where my jaws dropped upon seeing the "Pleasantville" look-alike compounds with well-manicured trees and gardens surrounding perfect story-book like houses, complete with maids in uniforms cleaning the windows as we drove past. I can hardly believe this is Bolivia. The same country where the poor are protesting for gas in the streets right now. The Valle de las lunas(Moon Valley) is a bizarre sight with rounded smooth finger-like rock formations(not the mountainous type) and honestly, if they call this Moon Valley, I am guessing that this is how the Moon looks like as well.... *shrug*
Bidding my farewells to my adopted family from my hostal, I was almost sad to leave...to the point of wanting to stay longer. I am gonna miss the cafe con leche from this place...that much I know! Hehe...
|  | 
|
