Saturday night and dogs barked and cars revved most of the night. It dawned grey and overcast. The opposite of yesterday morning.
The French couple Pierre and Marion and kids, left very early in their Citroen camper and we did not have a chance to say goodbye. A lovely family, and they were very helpful with hints on obtaining fuel and future camp sites.
After packing up and waiting 30min for the owner to open the gates, we were on the road south towards Petosi, by 11am with a relatively shiny Poki. .
Cricket
Before leaving, I got a WhatsApp from Kelvin in Australia, to say the Black Caps had beaten India in the third and final test. Without the benefit of wifi in our camp tonight, I think India failed by about 25 runs to chase down our small total, in their second innings. What an amazing achievement to beat the star studded Indians on their home turf. Our Indians were better than theirs…:) Ajaz Patel took a match winning total of 11 wickets for 160 runs! Sensational! I’ll have to be careful or the Bolivians might think I am a star too, with my black cap…:)
Leaving Sucre.
It was a completely different city, to the one we drove in, a couple of days ago. For some reason we skirted the city centre on the way in and got lots of drab suburbs. Leaving, took us through the centre and indeed, it could be called ’The White City’. Lots of white ashed Spanish architecture, and quite lovely.
My grandchildren, Charley & Jaxon will enjoy this. T Rex?
I’m so glad we decided to enter Bolivia, despite warnings of unrest and other matters.
This Bolivia, not Europe!!
Our destination today is Petosi, or beyond.
After passing through the upper reaches of the city and following the sat-nav, Jen said “we are on the wrong road”. We can’t be! I forgot, at our lunch stop where I attempted to work out our fuel reserves and mileage to the border, set the sat-nav to that border, and forgot to return it to Uyuni, our next destination. On Ruta 5, not Ruta 1, which we were on. It took us the best part of an hour, and precious fuel, to drive back through the narrow, steep, congested streets of Petosi to get onto the Ruta 5. The sat-nav however was telling us that it was 470k’s to Unuyi, when the road signs were saying 200k’s! It has not been a great advertisement for TomTom Sat-nav.
Potosi is a historic, densely populated and important town/city to he Bolivian economy. Since Spanish times in 1545 when silver ore was discovered, Petosi, was vital to the Spanish GDP. Once a thriving, wealthy city, the wealthiest in the America’s, it has since slipped into decline but is still producing tin, lead and other minerals. The miners suffering dreadful working conditions. There are several large mining operations and the slag heaps of overburden are enormous. It is in fact, the highest city in the world at 4100m above sea level. It was 3pm by the time we exited the city tentacles, so we had another hour to find a camp.
Part of the mining operation.
Finding a camp.
iOverlander gave us a couple of options for camping along the way to Uyuni (Uni), our next destination. We are about 200m from the winding main road, down a sandy track that obviously leads to a town nearby! We were sitting in Poki on a flat sandy area when two people wandered by. The male, Filipe, was quite animated and thought our presence of great significance. Wanting too take my photo and with Poki in it, and then got his daughter, wife, or… to take the both of us, and one with her and Poki and I…. a lovely interaction.
We have a small trickling stream running beside us. There has been thunder and the sky is black. We had passed through a storm earlier. Could we get a repeat of near disaster in Columbia several months ago? I asked Pillipe in sign language, if he thought there was a risk of flooding, telling him we are sleeping here. No problems, he indicated. I hope he’s right. Just in-case, we are not putting the Caranex up and leaving Poki in low ratio, if we have to make a hurried exit to higher ground in the night.
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