Potosi is one of the most important Spanish colonial settlements on the whole continent and at 4090m one of the highest cities in the world. A magnificent museum Casa de la Moneda is placed in the old city mint, where the silver from the nearby towering Cerro Rico has been transformed into coins for centuries and had a great influence on the development of currencies all around the world. From the dollar sign, to the serrated edges of the modern coins, for many of typical money features, it is possible to find parallels that lead directly back to Potosi. It is a city of great controversy, where for centuries the richness of the land has been exploited by foreigners, while using the tough and climate-adapted working force of the area. Up until now, the workers continue to dig out the vast silver treasure in extreme working conditions with many of the miners being underage and most of them catching deadly disease at some point in their working lives.
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Finally reunited! :) Manca's parents have made it to Santiago after a looong trip from Slovenia and it was time for well deserved hugs and kisses after more than eight months of separation. Although tired, we haven't really given them a lot of time to rest since we had planed a pretty long road-trip for the next three weeks. First day, we strolled around Santiago and visited a viewpoint offering a smoggy look over the huge city. A six million metropolis is not something you see everyday and especially for Manca's parents, the novelties and surprises were practically constant. The next day for example, after briefly visiting Valparaiso, we stopped at one of the many Pacific beaches to cook dinner and sleep wild just meters away from thundering waves. The road led us north, retracing the long drive through Atacama that we did a couple of days before. This time, we made a detour in the charming town of Vicuna, where we observed the endless vineyards and went for a very interesting star-gazing tour in the Mamalluco observatory. The hand of the desert was waving us goodbye as we finally reached Antofagasta where just a comparably short drive to San Pedro de Atacama was separating us from some amazing sightseeing. A crown event of any Altiplano visit is the famous Laguna route - an off-road passage which runs through the remote southwestern part of Bolivia passing several high-altitude lagoons, volcanoes and deserts on the way. A mixture of sandy, gravel and rocky roads with practically no services for 500 kilometers requires some preparations and despite having only 2WD drive on our car, we decided to take our chances. We filled up with gasoline, bought provisions for some days and took off. After a hundred kilometers of well maintained gravel road, we drove off the piste and into the mountains. The rocks on the track were big and we could only advance slowly but already when we reached the first of the lagoons with hundreds of flamingos calmly stomping around in it and feasting in the nutritious waters we realised there is a special experience in front of us. |
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February 2019
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