Day temperature is ok, about 18 deg. But at night it dropped to 10 below 0. Neither the Jeep nor the so called hostel was heated or windproof. So we put on all stuff we had 
Finally on 18th we arrived. Uyuni is a tiny desert village next to the worlds largest Salt lake <12000 km2!!, some pretty islands on the lake, 7m pure salt layer, then some 120m deep salty water and Lithium>. The people here still exploit the Salar manually. No machines except of 30 years old trucks to transport it. Weired to watch!
Next day we continued to Potosi, because i Uyuni there is nothing to do except to eat the most delicious food I ever had> Bisteak de Llama!!!! Just awesome! I start liking Llamas if even just for their steak!Anyway.... Potosi (located somewhere on 4065m) is the highest big city I think. It even used to be the biggest city on both american continents / even bigger than Madrid, Paris, etc. But that was in 1650.
It is a mining town located between grey, brown, green, red colored mountains.... Over 8,000,000 people had died in the mines here. But to get there we only had to go by bus about 8h over an unpaved road. True, it is a main road, but over 50% of bolivias roads are unpaved. Just in the middle of our journey we happened to get stuck for one hour in a riverbed. Riverbed? True, Bolivia has many of them, but not too many bridges.... Well but was quite an adventure to see the busdrivers fixing the problem by collecting stones, wood and other stuff to try to get it onroad again.... Inventive people they are!
Yesterday we went on a tour through the mines of Cerro Rico (above Potosi). Never in my life seen such! 7000 people, 1000 of them kids between 8 and 16 years old. Our guide was an exminer having worked there for 3 years only. All miners die latest at the age of 45, lots of them even at the age of 30 of silicosis pneumonia. Why? They are working in a cooperative, meaning there is no company to back them up or to be sued. So they have to pay for every improvement and do not have enough money for that. The working conditions are just unimaginable. No machines. No lifts. All work done by hammer and... or dynamite only. So the air inside is full of asbest and poison fumes and lots of dust. The temperature at the working places is almost 35 degrees. I almost could not breathe, which was also because of the thin air in 4300m and the hard work we had to do.... Crawling in low, narrow muddy shafts just big enough that one person could creep through. They are really working like 500 y! ears ago, when the mining started. Almost no savety precautions. 1ts weighting carts on trails go with an enormous speed through the tunnels, you just have to press yourself against the wall not to be overrun by them.
So whay are the workers doing it? Because they become rich by it. They have no fixed salary, all depends on their luck of finding some silver, tin, copper or else. Their average incme is 1500 Bolivianos, while the income of a teacher is about 700 Bol per month.... (6 Bol equals 1 US$)
So most of them get addicted to being rich and do not stop till they die. And still a lot of miners die. They work in tiny shafts of about 1.5m2 without protection against dust etc. in 35 deg. for minimum 8h a day for 6 days a week just with hammer and.... Well. Once I tried my luck too. Creeping to one of the miners who was working on his silver line!!!, he gave me his hammer para probarlo. I just could do about 6 strokes then I was exhausted. Not the right work for me, I suppose.Anyway... will continue tomorrow to Sucre, getting to a warmer climate and stay there for a while. Therefore the 5 of us will have to split up.... the girls continueing faster than me for they are running outta time.....looking forward to learning to know new companeros!!
so long.... Oliver.