Yes the title tells you about how many places we visited the past days. But it all seemed really easy going to us no rush, just pure pleasure, great landscape, great people, great markets!
So as I was saying we crossed the boarder on the 1st of October, and arrived in Copacabana. From there the next morning, we took a nice cheap boat to Isla del Sol! It is said that it's where the Inca religion and culture started. According to this same civilization, it was on this lake that was created the Sun god and the Moon godess having both of them their own island! The Isla del Sol is bigger and present more interest for its numerous ruins, nice mediteranean bays, and possible nice walks. We slepts on this island one night after a nice walk to the south that took us to the ruins of the ¨templo del Sol¨. We came back by boat from the south to our little village where we had our hostal. On our first way to the island the lake was really calm and there was absolutly no wind, the dry yellow rocky island, really gave us the impression to be on the mediteranean sea next to some greek islands or Sardinia. The color of the water was a deep blue, the sun was really shining, the temperature like a nice day of spring! However when we came back from the south, the lake turned even more like the sea, with big waves and strong winds. We had hired a small fisherman to take us on his fisher boat which was really moving a lot! When arriving at are small "seaport" where only one rocky pier was build, it was a real challenge to get off the boat. Without even attaching the boat the captain asked us to jump on the pier but of course with such big waves, the boat almost turned over, and Sao Mai and the oldman fell in the water! While helping Sao Mai to get on the pier and the boat not to crash on it, I lost my sun glasses...! Yeah it was dense! Next day just before leaving back to the mainland, being full of hope, I went to have a look at the place where I had lost my sun glasses and miraculously found them back! They had passed the whole night in the lake in between two rocks!
On the afternoon, we headed toward La Paz. The next day was dedicated to explore this messy highest capital in the world (4000m).
In the morning we passed a lot of time walking around in the old streets full of merchants and markets of all kinds where you can find absolutly everything one can need. Then we headed up to the more colonial part of the city, which has nothing impressive for a capital main square beside the gun bullets on the presidential house. Finally, on our way to the new town, we stopped in a really nice comtemporary art musuem in which there was an exposition of a "Che Guevara" painting contest which had for objective to give back this man its real identity and values, since its image was over exploited. We ended our long day in a cinema..cool! Our day was really fructous and we had no motivation to leave this city so we stood another day, hanging in cafes, posting many postcards, and taking photos of our biggest demonstration since the begining of the trip, that was for keeping some governement structure in La Paz. At nigth we finally took a bus to Potosi where we arrived at 4:30 in the morning! We still managed to find a hostal and sleep a bit. This saturday 6th of October was a lazy day, we just walked. Personnaly I actually passed my day running around Potosi trying to find a place with cable Tv to watch this fantastic rugby world cup quarter final between France and New Zeland! After a few hours I unfortunatly had to give up since from this old very powerfull colonial mining town ( in the 17th century this city was the biggest on the american continent with more than 100 000 inhabitants and was one of the richest in the world because of its mining explotation producing 80% of the silver in the world) there is almost nothing left and its actual developlement is very poor they did not even have the channel needed to watch rugby!! I passed my afternoon listenning to the game in live on "France-Inter" in a cybercafe( this however they have them every where we've been, even in the most remote places like the one I am in now, Uyuni, small town in the desert of south Bolivia). On the next day we headed to Sucre, famous since it was the colonial capital, and still keeps some governement infrastructures. We took a cab, costing only a dollar more than the bus, the two hours of taxi being 4$ per person! We hanged around sucre, eating good food, resting in the very nice main square, talking with street kids, and walking around in the very nice streets in between its white colonial buildings. We ended our day in a really cool dutch cafe, where they played a surprising interesting movie on the mines of Potosi and children working there. This movie was "poignant" and really gave me the will to visit those mines and share a moment of my life with those brave and desperate miners. The Cerro Rico is the biggest mine of all times and about 8 millions indigenous died under colonial times working in horrible conditions, which led to this sad name of "the moutain that eats man". Nowadays, miners still work there but in cooperative having absolutly no restriction for what so ever. This movie gave us a really good understanding of the mines. On the next day, we went back to Potosi, and Alex and I went on a tour to visit these impressive Cerro Rico dominating the city of Potosi.
The tour allows miners to get not only a 15% of the money we pay but also to get what ever the tourist like to bring/buy for them, from soft drinks, to dinamyte! The group made of two belgium, two Irish and one hollandes, one Italian(alex) and one french(me) tried the protection clothe transforming us instantly into real miners! We passed by a little shop to buy coca leaves(requested to be able to enter the mines), some soft drinks and dinamytes for us and the miners. Our bus took us to the entrance of the mine, which is not at all a museum but a real mine still in function and we had this proved just on our 
arrival with some miners pulling out of the mine a huge wagon full of minerals!
The rest of the visit was just incredible! Working conditions are incredibly hard and similar to those of "Miserables". In fact there is no air exit leading to horrible density of dust in the tunnels, very high temperatures, it is really hard to breath, there is no light but yours on your helmet, there is mud and the very small tunnels allow you to pass only ramping, the material is not better, old wagons, trails that are broken and not fixed on the ground, no emergency exit, and no one even put a filter on his mouth! Miners know their life will be shorter (one miner starting to work at 18 or 20 years old will have high probability of dying at the age of 45, 50 years old), but don't really have the choice. The small spartiate museum inside the mines gives some very interesting info on the story of this 15th century mine but also on its actual functionning. For example 93% of the miners work in the mines because there is no other jobs available! Inside the mine we could see them at work and offer them a moment of rest offering them what we had brought making them happy!...i'll continue later on since once again I have to leave the internet place!!
So as I was saying we crossed the boarder on the 1st of October, and arrived in Copacabana. From there the next morning, we took a nice cheap boat to Isla del Sol! It is said that it's where the Inca religion and culture started. According to this same civilization, it was on this lake that was created the Sun god and the Moon godess having both of them their own island! The Isla del Sol is bigger and present more interest for its numerous ruins, nice mediteranean bays, and possible nice walks. We slepts on this island one night after a nice walk to the south that took us to the ruins of the ¨templo del Sol¨. We came back by boat from the south to our little village where we had our hostal. On our first way to the island the lake was really calm and there was absolutly no wind, the dry yellow rocky island, really gave us the impression to be on the mediteranean sea next to some greek islands or Sardinia. The color of the water was a deep blue, the sun was really shining, the temperature like a nice day of spring! However when we came back from the south, the lake turned even more like the sea, with big waves and strong winds. We had hired a small fisherman to take us on his fisher boat which was really moving a lot! When arriving at are small "seaport" where only one rocky pier was build, it was a real challenge to get off the boat. Without even attaching the boat the captain asked us to jump on the pier but of course with such big waves, the boat almost turned over, and Sao Mai and the oldman fell in the water! While helping Sao Mai to get on the pier and the boat not to crash on it, I lost my sun glasses...! Yeah it was dense! Next day just before leaving back to the mainland, being full of hope, I went to have a look at the place where I had lost my sun glasses and miraculously found them back! They had passed the whole night in the lake in between two rocks!
On the afternoon, we headed toward La Paz. The next day was dedicated to explore this messy highest capital in the world (4000m).
In the morning we passed a lot of time walking around in the old streets full of merchants and markets of all kinds where you can find absolutly everything one can need. Then we headed up to the more colonial part of the city, which has nothing impressive for a capital main square beside the gun bullets on the presidential house. Finally, on our way to the new town, we stopped in a really nice comtemporary art musuem in which there was an exposition of a "Che Guevara" painting contest which had for objective to give back this man its real identity and values, since its image was over exploited. We ended our long day in a cinema..cool! Our day was really fructous and we had no motivation to leave this city so we stood another day, hanging in cafes, posting many postcards, and taking photos of our biggest demonstration since the begining of the trip, that was for keeping some governement structure in La Paz. At nigth we finally took a bus to Potosi where we arrived at 4:30 in the morning! We still managed to find a hostal and sleep a bit. This saturday 6th of October was a lazy day, we just walked. Personnaly I actually passed my day running around Potosi trying to find a place with cable Tv to watch this fantastic rugby world cup quarter final between France and New Zeland! After a few hours I unfortunatly had to give up since from this old very powerfull colonial mining town ( in the 17th century this city was the biggest on the american continent with more than 100 000 inhabitants and was one of the richest in the world because of its mining explotation producing 80% of the silver in the world) there is almost nothing left and its actual developlement is very poor they did not even have the channel needed to watch rugby!! I passed my afternoon listenning to the game in live on "France-Inter" in a cybercafe( this however they have them every where we've been, even in the most remote places like the one I am in now, Uyuni, small town in the desert of south Bolivia). On the next day we headed to Sucre, famous since it was the colonial capital, and still keeps some governement infrastructures. We took a cab, costing only a dollar more than the bus, the two hours of taxi being 4$ per person! We hanged around sucre, eating good food, resting in the very nice main square, talking with street kids, and walking around in the very nice streets in between its white colonial buildings. We ended our day in a really cool dutch cafe, where they played a surprising interesting movie on the mines of Potosi and children working there. This movie was "poignant" and really gave me the will to visit those mines and share a moment of my life with those brave and desperate miners. The Cerro Rico is the biggest mine of all times and about 8 millions indigenous died under colonial times working in horrible conditions, which led to this sad name of "the moutain that eats man". Nowadays, miners still work there but in cooperative having absolutly no restriction for what so ever. This movie gave us a really good understanding of the mines. On the next day, we went back to Potosi, and Alex and I went on a tour to visit these impressive Cerro Rico dominating the city of Potosi.
The tour allows miners to get not only a 15% of the money we pay but also to get what ever the tourist like to bring/buy for them, from soft drinks, to dinamyte! The group made of two belgium, two Irish and one hollandes, one Italian(alex) and one french(me) tried the protection clothe transforming us instantly into real miners! We passed by a little shop to buy coca leaves(requested to be able to enter the mines), some soft drinks and dinamytes for us and the miners. Our bus took us to the entrance of the mine, which is not at all a museum but a real mine still in function and we had this proved just on our 
arrival with some miners pulling out of the mine a huge wagon full of minerals!
The rest of the visit was just incredible! Working conditions are incredibly hard and similar to those of "Miserables". In fact there is no air exit leading to horrible density of dust in the tunnels, very high temperatures, it is really hard to breath, there is no light but yours on your helmet, there is mud and the very small tunnels allow you to pass only ramping, the material is not better, old wagons, trails that are broken and not fixed on the ground, no emergency exit, and no one even put a filter on his mouth! Miners know their life will be shorter (one miner starting to work at 18 or 20 years old will have high probability of dying at the age of 45, 50 years old), but don't really have the choice. The small spartiate museum inside the mines gives some very interesting info on the story of this 15th century mine but also on its actual functionning. For example 93% of the miners work in the mines because there is no other jobs available! Inside the mine we could see them at work and offer them a moment of rest offering them what we had brought making them happy!...i'll continue later on since once again I have to leave the internet place!!
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