Looking for adventure in all the dark places

We have a very slow connection so no photos on this one, but I will put them up when I can.

I'm not so sure that coming to Bolivia during the height of the rainy season was such a good idea. Not that we had much of a choice but it adds an element of excitement everyday. The roads in bolivia are famous for having stunning views but they are also famous for being very bad. Add a nice layer of rain on top of the dirt and you get a lot of questions as to whether we can drive on the roads at all. There are of course paved options but these go way far east over to the jungle and we sort of want to stick to the desert for a while. And then as the icing on top, our map seems to be totally wrong when it comes to roads so we are just sort of stabbing in the dark when it comes to our route.
To start things out we left la Paz after getting new expensive Pirelli tires, drove up the autopista out of the valley, and Megan promptly got a flat tire. My first thought was that the tires had been mounted wrong and they pinched her tube but upon closer inspection she had managed to pick up a wicked piece of metal that sliced through the tire and tore apart the innertube. We changed the tire with the help of police force that was manning the checkpoint. After some debate we decided it might be best to go back into town and buy another innertube since we had used up our spare and we probably couldn't find another one for a long time. To sum it up we didn't leave la Paz until 4 and the next town was 170 miles away. Large thunderstorms hung over our route but somehow we managed to mostly dodge them all. Minutes after arriving in Oruro the rain came in full force but we were tucked safely in and headed off to find a Hari Chrishna vegetarian restaurant. Yummy
We met another rider named Lenny from new York and rode the amazing 180 miles to Potosi through terrain that reminded me of a mixtures of Montana, Nevada, and southern Utah. Except at 14000 feet. One of the best days of riding in a while as we managed to dodge most of the very large thunderstorm cells. We stopped to watch the lighting shows and then ran away as fast as we could arriving in potosi just after a big dump.
I recommend looking up Potosi on the web so I don't have to write about it but it is a very cool colonial city with a rich history of silver mining. Enough silver was extracted from the mountain above town to make a bridge from here to Madrid (whatever that means) but at the cost of 8 million lives of miners.
The mines are still being worked today by small cooperatives of miners but at any given time there are 10,000 people inside the mountain extracting silver, tin, lead, and zinc by hand. The conditions these guys work in are dank, dusty, and dangerous. Asbestos dust flows freely through the shafts and most of these guys are pounding holes for dynamite by hand. They make about 100 dollars per month doing this (if they find a vein) and die young from bad stuff in their lungs.
I, of course, had to check this out and signed up for a mine tour along with Lenny. Megan opted out.
Ever since I was young I have loved exploring mines and I couldn't miss this opportunity. We even got to explode dynamite.
With mixed feelings we exited the mines feeling elated because it was super cool, but just as nuclear bombs are super cool, I would rather they not exist. However I still want to learn about it and what better way than to experience it myself. The dynamite was a full on guilty pleasure but when else am I going to get that opportunity?
I will think twice before using silver but since almost everything in this world uses some silver what are we to do except raise awareness of where it comes from and think about the usage. This mine was bad but I am sure there are even worse.
It is pouring rain in potosi as we prepare to drive the 140 miles down to uyuni and the great salt flats. My map shows the road as dirt but I have that there is a lot of payment on it. We'll see. I hate packing up the bikes in the rain but at some point we have to keep moving south and I doubt tomorrow will be better than today. So here we go.
Sorry for no photos on this. We will get Megan's awesome photos up soon.