As you know, I had the opportunity to take a few days off and travel with Marcos to Sucre y Potosi in January. These cities are about 10 hours away and higher in elevation! Besides the mines, we had our own share of adventures...Here are a few top shots from our trip...

Time off began with a 3-day retreat. SLMs from Oki, Yap and Montero came over to our place, right here at our sisters aspirancy. Here we are,well most of us anyway, happily together up by Cristo de la Concordia overlooking Cochabamaba

 Sucre is known as the white city, I was only there a full day (as I got there a day after Marcos). We visited their gorgeous cemetary and saw a few famous Bolivian graves, hiked up to mirador to see a fantastic view of the city, and decided to venture off in the dinomobile to the dino park. One cool thing about the dino park was this wall on the side of the mountain. It is slanted and natural, discovered by chance and covered in dinosaur tracks. As the surface deteriorates with time, they have found new sets of dinosaur tracks from even earlier years. Besides that, the park was overrated but the dino truck was fun, and we even got to sit on top on the way back.

Left The wall of tracks. looks like there are a few different types of dinosaurs as some move left to right, diagonal, or straight up just depends on their migration patterns. Right Marcos and I at entrance to park



Potosi is just a few hours from Sucre. We left that evening in order to start our day early Friday morning with a mine tour and then a visit to the Casa de Moneda. Though we are just friends, we were probably seen as the odd couple by others, a Mexican and an American, bilangual and residing in Bolivia...hm...que raro! haha.
Also hidden in Potosi; in the oldest monstary in Bolivia, is a silver plated crucifix with a miraculous image of Jesus Christ. Every 50 years they bring Him out in a procession, because of all the silver in the mines and how wealthy Potosi was, they would line the streets with a carpet of silver just for this procession. The Spanish, who colonised Potosi and benefited a LOT from the silver taken out of Cerro Rico/the mines, said this city was so wealthy even their streets were lined in Silver. Of course that doesn´t happen anymore, but the procession continues as tradition. Also, the hair on the statue is real hair from someone who entered into the order, since especially for women religious, hair was seen as a symbol of vanity, and they say IT STILL GROWS!!! crazy, right? (unfortunately, no picture)

          
We explored the city,
climbed the oldest monostary in Bolivia
(best view of the city),
found some old trains and even tried
llama meat for the first time...hm, a little unsure about it, but not bad.
What a wonderful 3-day trip!