Potosi Local Flavor
What a difference a shower and a few minutes not on the bus make. Potosi, the city we will be in for the next few days, is a crowded, dusty, silver mining town, once considered the highest city in the world. It definitely has some charm. Vendors have pitched up street stalls all over. There are people everywhere on these slivers of sidewalks, hugging roads that were obviously designed for horses and donkeys, not vehicles.
Our first evening in Potosi was one of the types that just occasionally happen naturally when travelling. Its some of the ‘good stuff’ of travel.The previous evening the four of us had played a little “I never” so we were all around feeling much more in the know and comfortable with each other (the details of which are covered under the ‘code of the road’ scripture known to all travelers, originating, if TV commercials are to be believed, in Las Vegas, and therefore: Sorry! no juicy details here, I’ll just note that there are very few saints in the group). We headed from our hotel, the Jerusalem, within the hour and quickly found a very cute café right on the main square. Its seems that all Bolivian towns have at least one main square, with a few statues, trees, grass and flowers. They are all pretty attractive. This café had the best bathroom we had experienced yet in Bolivia, so for that feature alone, it gets the double thumbs up. We visited this café three times in our visit, so you see how great it actually was. I mean, it had candles!
After a few visits to the bathroom and a couple of Potosinas, the best of the local brews in our groups opinion, we found ourselves an equally cozy, hazy place to eat for the night. As this was our first night in an actual bar as a group, the drinks flowed, and the conversations were definitely comfort and alcohol fueled. We noticed that people all around the bar were playing a little dice game, consisting of a leather cup and 5 dice. I mean, EVERYBODY was playing this game. Aaron, who is fluent in Spanish, and Mark who knows way more than I do, went up to the bar and before I knew it were chatting like old friends with one the bar owners, and were playing the game, call Chaco, which is a combination of poker and Yahtzee. They were also drinking so much rum that I was beginning to wonder how they were still standing. 20 minutes later, we had met a couple, Eban and Ninette, just friends, I’ll note in case they learn English and read this, and we were all learning and playing Chaco. It was girls against boys, and somehow, we lost both times!I picked up a few new words as I struggled to understand the Spanish conversation flying around, though really its amazing how much fun you can have with people you don’t even understand. Abagado = Lawyer, this is what Eban does for a living. I tried my best to speak, and threw in a couple of French words for good measure just to really confuse things.
So it basically went from 11pm to 2am in short order, and we found ourselves wandering drunkenly home, with our new friends. Fortunately Mark noticed our hotel, as the rest of us would have just kept on walking til we hit the mines, I think. I should note that this wasn’t particular brilliant on our parts, as its not all that safe at night here, but fortunately, no harm done and Mark didn’t have to use his kung-fu grip after all. (An aside: the kung fu grip is a hand gesture with powers purportedly akin to the Jedi mind trick. It generally compels those its used on to laugh ridiculously at the person attempting this, therefore distracting them.) The men were shouting “Champions” in Spanish most of the way home. I think that probably scared off the bad guys. Hurrahh, as Hannah puts it. A nice evening and a cultural experience, just hanging with the locals.
Tags: Bolivia, Locals, Mines, Potosi, Tag Index
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