#potosidepartment

[travelnshit]

In Potosí, arguably the highest city with a population above 10000 in the world at 4100 m.a.s.l., you can pay a bloke to take you into a working mine. Cerro Rico, the mountain you'll be crawling into, funded the Spanish Empire at the expense of the indigenous people. There's not a lot of silver left, they're mostly mining tin and zinc and they work as cooperatives now. We sat in the mine and listened to dynamite charges go off. I feel like our insurance company would laugh at us if something went tits up and we tried to claim. We sat with the miners drinking beer and singani but to be fair most of it ends up on the floor for Pachamama, asking for protection from accidents, which could probably largely be avoided if they weren't drinking before handling drilling equipment and dynamite. Pic 1: Tipping stuff into a cart which will be pushed by hand out of the mine. Pic 2: Cheeky beer after a bit of drilling. Pic 3: Drilling a hole for the dynamite. Pic 4: Well those ladders can fuck off, quite frankly. Terrifying rickety things. Pic 5: I'm really hoping this beam wasn't integral to the ceiling not collapsing. Pic 6: Me trying to convince myself the walls aren't closing in. Pic 7: Apparently this crap on the walls is zinc oxide. Pic 8: El Tio, the underground god. You can't enter the mine until you've plied him with coca leaves, alcohol and a fag. Pic 9: The mine. Pic 10: Before they head into the mine the lads sit around smoking fags, filling their cheeks with coca leaves and sipping Ceibo which is 96% alcohol. . https://travelnshit.com/2023/02/28/down-the-mines/ • • • #bolivia #visitbolivia #potosidepartment #southamerica #travel #instatravel #travelgram #wanderlust #lesbiantravel #couplegoals #travelcouple #travelbolivia #altitude #potosi #silverminetour #potosiminetour (at Potosí, Bolivia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpvBSU2uIIT/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[travelnshit]

Salar de Uyuni Tour Day 4 We got up at an hour even the sparrows would raise an eyebrow at to gawp at the sky. Worth it! The galactic core was right above us, all dusty and spectacular and wonderful. Obviously it didn't look with the naked eye like it does in the photo, that's Lightroom jiggery pokery. I'm continually impressed with my little #SonyRX100 We watched the fiery skyball creep above the horizon then shovelled some cake into our chops before our driver took us to a particularly vast expanse of white so we could repeatedly demonstrate the lack of perspective on the salt flats. It's not as easy as it looks but it's a metric fuck tonne of fun. One last thing we put in our eyeholes was the train cemetery which is basically several rusting hulks of very old trains left to rot in a field and rebranded as a tourist attraction. You can climb on them if you like, lots of people do, but I really enjoy not having tetanus so I stayed well away. . https://travelnshit.com/2023/02/26/salar-de-uyuni-tour-day-4/ • • • #bolivia #visitbolivia #potosidepartment #southamerica #landscapeporn #travel #instatravel #travelgram #wanderlust #lesbiantravel #couplegoals #travelcouple #naturegram #instanature #travelbolivia #salardeuyunitour #altitude #roadtrip #salardeuyuni #milkyway #astro #astrophotography #starphotography (at Salar De Uyuni) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpdV5HiO-k-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[travelnshit]

Salar de Uyuni Tour Day 3 We started the day by gawping at the Arbol de Piedra, which means stone tree, which would be cool as a tourist attraction in its own right but it's at the head of a huge stone army, an invasion of awesome rocks that were vomited out by a nearby volcano centuries ago. It's pretty epic. Then we proceeded to put a metric fuck tonne more lakes of varying colours in our eyeholes, including Laguna Negra (pic 7) which sort of looks like it has some manner of skin disease. We had lunch by a rock, saw crops of quinoa, drove across a small salt flat age finally ended up in a hotel made from salt in Villa Candelaria. Bernaba, our driver, took us out to watch the fiery skyball fuck off over the Salar de Uyuni. There was a couple of centimetres of water on the flats which obviously we took full advantage with many cheesy jumping photos. Jumping around in salt water does mean it looks like you showed up fully clothed to an orgy once the salt water dries. . https://travelnshit.com/2023/02/25/salar-de-uyuni-tour-day-3/ • • • #bolivia #visitbolivia #potosidepartment #southamerica #landscapeporn #travel #instatravel #travelgram #wanderlust #lesbiantravel #couplegoals #travelcouple #naturegram #instanature #travelbolivia #salardeuyunitour #altitude #roadtrip #tupizatoquetenachico #lakes #flamingos #salardeuyuni #reflection #puddlegram (at Villa Candelaria) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpbAxsGOKH_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[travelnshit]

Salar de Uyuni Tour Day 2 Today was largely water. We visited several lakes in various colours frequented by flamingos. I love these lanky streaks of pinkish birds. They’re really quite fabulous aren’t they? They have to take a run up to take off then their little legs carry on paddling along the surface as they gather momentum. I say little legs, they’re not, they’re comedy strings of spaghetti that have no right holding the weight of an entire animal up. The lakes were alien though. White, green, even a spectacular red broken up by white borax islands. We also spent a bit of time soaking in a hot spring. There were two pools so we beelined for the hotter one as a guy who I think works there warned us it was 28°. Puh-leeze, I’d run my bath hotter than that! Is it really a hot spring if you don’t feel like you might lose your epidermis? It was a gorgeous temperature. We also headed to Sol de Mañana, a classic geothermal landscape plonked in the middle of nowhere. You want geysers? You got it. Boiling mud? You’re covered. Though hopefully not in aforementioned boiling mud. This whole national park is just otherworldly and today was probably my favourite day of all. . https://travelnshit.com/2023/02/24/salar-de-uyuni-tour-day-2/ • • • #bolivia #visitbolivia #tupiza #carnaval #potosidepartment #southamerica #landscapeporn #travel #instatravel #travelgram #wanderlust #lesbiantravel #couplegoals #travelcouple #naturegram #instanature #travelbolivia #salardeuyunitour #altitude #roadtrip #tupizatoquetenachico #lakes #soldemañana #flamingos (at Sol De La Mañana, Potosi, Bolivia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpXyvLfuMg1/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[travelnshit]

Salar de Uyuni Tour Day 1. We congregated at the tour office where we met Adrian, a very tall Swedish man who spoke more Spanish than us and, it transpired later in the trip, had a very poor sense of smell. This was ideal given he'd be sharing rooms with two farting lesbians. We stopped a couple of times to gawp at more rocks because we're still not bored of weird, spiky rocks yet, then drove down some pretty bouncy roads as llamas and vicuñas bolted out of the way and I filled my SD card up with photos of their arses. Other things we put in our eyeholes today included Pueblo Fantasma, which means ghost town, which is quite a dramatic way to describe a set of ruins. I do love a good ruin. It used to be a mining settlement, apparently the inhabitants reneged on a deal with the devil which isn't really the done thing so he killed most of them and the rest started seeing ghosts. They sensibly noped the fuck out. We climbed up to 4855 m.a.s.l. to look at a lake with a volcano backdrop which set the theme for the trip (and when I say climbed, the 4x4 did all the climbing whilst we nod-slept and drooled a bit) then finished up in Quetena Chico where we were stuffed absolutely full of food. Good start, guys. Good start. . https://travelnshit.com/2023/02/23/salar-de-uyuni-tour-day-1/ • • • #bolivia #visitbolivia #tupiza #carnaval #potosidepartment #southamerica #landscapeporn #travel #instatravel #travelgram #wanderlust #lesbiantravel #couplegoals #travelcouple #naturegram #instanature #travelbolivia #salardeuyunitour #pueblofantasma #altitude #roadtrip #tupizatoquetenachico #elsillar (at Quetena Chico, Potosi, Bolivia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpV6VcnOj5Y/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[travelnshit]

We managed to rock up to Tupiza right in the middle of Carnaval. Sounds fun doesn't it? Except Western Union was closed for three days and the ATMs wouldn't accept a card and someone in the parade sprayed us with foam and it got all over my food and I had a complete sense of humour bypass about the whole thing. Eventually we managed to change some dollars, booked ourselves onto a tour, then went for a little stroll around a trail just outside of the town. These rocks though, they'll have your drool glands working overtime. Big, red spikes stretching up into the sky. They don't look real. Some of them actually look like a giant sex toy collection. For lesbians we're way to easily amused by phallic objects. We enjoyed the last day of Carnaval. Everyone had decorated their vehicles with streamers and balloons. People had lit coals and were burning coca leaves as offerings to Pachamama, and they were spraying their cars with beer. A waste of perfectly good motor impairment beverage if you ask me. Later on the whole town turned into one big water fight. I was feeling quite smug that I’d gotten off lightly simply by using Tarrant as a human shield before I was caught with a direct hit to the tits by someone from the back of a tuktuk. . https://travelnshit.com/2023/02/22/a-bit-too-long-in-tupiza/ • • • #bolivia #visitbolivia #tupiza #carnaval #potosidepartment #southamerica #landscapeporn #geology #travel #instatravel #travelgram #wanderlust #lesbiantravel #couplegoals #travelcouple #naturegram #instanature (at Tupiza, Bolivia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpQoauzOw8l/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=