Potosí - How I´ve missed you!

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Potosí. This is a great city full of old history, but thank god I've just spent my last few weeks on the Altiplano or I'm not sure I could have handled the altitute (4070 meters - you figure it out!). This is the place where, 15 years ago, I would go two feet and stop to catch my breath. This morning I walked 7 blocks carrying my laundry, and only dealt with minor heavy breathing, so I´ve improved!

We got in at 2:30 this morning after a very typical bus ride (leave at 7 pm, get crammed in so hard that your knees and/or shoulder blades are rubbing against the metal of the older-than-the-hills bus), up and snuggly with other passengers, and then hold on for dear life between cat naps. The bus stopped, but no bathrooms in the dusty and dark little town (that didn´t stop us, but it could have been a lot easier). We arrived at 2:30 a.m.

Anel, Ashley and I are in the same room at our home-stay house and the boys are at a hotel. If they´d had wifi I'd be jealous, but as it is I´m always up for meeting new people and learning how not to electrocute myself in their shower (always electric, with extraneous wires twisted around the shower head - yikes!).

After a visit at a local university and seeing their tiny, cramped, inadequate, techology-barren library, I began to appreciate the 6-floor University of Alaska library, or even my local library in Sammamish with their soaring spaces and free internet. You can even study there! After the University visit, I tried Mocochinchi for the first time. They dry a peach, then pour hot water over it in a glass. VERY good! Also tried Tucumanas (another variety of empanada), which then made lunch hard to finish (although the wine might have had something to do with it as well - the wine here is seriously INCREDIBLE!). You have to try everything, of course, and so far I haven´t found much I don´t like except the huge quanitites of carbs (rice, potato, pasta, french fries, and yukka.

Today we visit a hospital and orphanage - then give our presentation. Tomorrow we will visit El Cerro Rico, where miners work for themselves in deplorable conditions and have turned the hill into such a maze of mining tunnels that it´s amazing it still stands.