Potosi and back into northern Argentina

Potosi is the highest city of its size in the world and at 4060 meters you`re first day you get winded just getting out of bed. At one time apparently it was one of the richest in the world being bigger that Paris. It`s a town based solely on its silver mine located in the moutain overlooking the town, unfortunately its said that in 20 years the mine`ll be dry, which puts most of the town out of work. Tourism is helping a little but you have to wonder what will happen to this town when the metals stop coming out of the earth. We were able to go an a tour of the mine which was extremely eye opening, 2 hours down there breathing the dust and the pumped in oxygen, sometimes walking, sometimes crawling and you`re exhausted. Yet you meet miners down there that have been doing it since thirteen years old, sometime for 24 hour shifts. Needless to say 25 year olds look 40, and 40 years olds already half severe health problems. To cheer us up at the end of the tour they let prepare and blow up our own dynamite, all in all a pretty depressingly surreal day. After Potosi is was back into Argentina, which included 8 hours in the back of a small flatbed on a dusty roadwith at times 30+ bolivians, Yavi, getting caught for a few more days in Salta (I love that place), weird experiences in Tucuman, Cordoba and the beginning of my march to Buenos Aires and then Tierra del Fuego.