Jannis & Martine

A couple of days ago we still were in Potosi where we were introduced to a bit of the history of this area.

The little streets of Potosi are full with lovely Spanish balcony covered & brightly coloured buildings, so you can still see that back in the 17th century Potisi was a very wealthy city. In fact, back then it was the largest city in the world.

Potosi became so wealthy because back then there was a huge amount of silver in the mountains around the city. The nasty thing was that the Spanish got this silver out of the mountains by forcing the native people and African slaves to work in the very unhealthy mines, killing a couple of MILLION of them in the process. It seems like the Spanish didn’t mind to much, because they used the African slaves and natives for about 250 years, until there was no more silver left.  The church didn’t seem to mind to much too, because a big amount of this silver was used to ‘decorate’ the local churches…

The silver was also used to make the money for the Spanish kingdom, so a big mint was operating in Potosi. This mint is still around, it has now been restured and is very impressive. It is a very big, but also a very beautifully designed, building with about hundred rooms inside. Each room is now a small museum, and the old Austrian horse driven minting machines (to make coins from the crude silver) are still around.

Potosi is one of the nicest cities we have ever seen, but its main disadvantage is that it is the highest city in the world. Its main plaza is situated at about 4000 meters high. So, walking around, uphill, in the winding streets is a bit of a struggle as constantly it feels like you’ve just run a maraton. At night it also gets very cold, and they don{t put the heating in the hotels, because they think it’s still pretty warm now. As the Salar the Uyuni had also been very cold, we needed a change of climate. 

So, after having stayed a couple of days in Potosi we moved to Sucre which, for Bolivian standards, is ‘pretty’  low (about 3000 meters) in the mountains. We arrived in Sucre by a short but very beautiful ride through the mountains, in sort of a taxi which we shared with 2 other people. When we got out of this taxi it was already feeling a lot warmer, and we could breath normal again. 

Apart from this Sucre is also a very nice city. Not so sweet and cosy as Potosi is, but a bit more elegant (all the buildings in the centre are white here) and with a much better nightlife (we even have found three Dutch bars here, so we ate ‘bitterballen’ yesterday).  Sucre also used to be Bolivia’s only capital, but now it has to share this status with La Paz as the government moved to that city a while ago. But, as the supreme court still resides in Sucre and as the independence from Spain was declared here, Sucre remains one of Bolivia’s TWO capitals.

When we arrived here last Thursday we heard that this weekend Bolivia was going to celebrate its 200 years of indepence. So, by incidence, we were staying in exactly the right city this weekend.

They have made lots of work of the indepence celebratings, so we got see some nice things of a very varied program. From groups of all over South-America dressed in traditional dresses, local rock and folk bands, a very good Jazz-band which brilliantly mixed standard Jazz instruments with local ones, such as wooden fluits, to some fireworks (the organisation has hired some guys who fire ‘mortars’ and other big stuff from behind each band and from the the middle of the busy plaza, with people curiously watching from very close-by if everything is going all right).

We will see if they have organised something for tonight too…

Jannis.  

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 10:40 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.