Leaving La Paz yet again we went off to check out some other Bolivia towns:  Sucre, Potosi, and Tupiza.  Each had there own attractions.  Sucre was nice and is the constitutional capital of Bolivia.  They have been protesting to become Bolivia´s actual capital city, but with Bolivia´s claim to fame ¨La Paz being the highest capital in the world¨, it likely isn´t going to happen. 

We hung out in Sucre for a couple of days.  Checked out a cement quarry, where they had unearthed some 65 million year old dinosaur tracks.   By chance because the rock they were mining from the side of the mountain contained too much magnesium oxide (we think) they stopped and didnt turn the tracks into cement fodder.  They have created some to scale models of dinosaurs on the opposite side and you can lookout onto the tracks that climb up the side of the hill.  Didnt get a close look as they are trying to get the site declared a world heritage site, but still pretty cool considering their size.  The big ones down the middle are brontosaurus tracks.  There were like 3000 tracks on the side of the hill!

The next day we got up early to head off to Potosi.  We had to leave early as something that happens from time to time in Bolivia, we have found out, is that people blockade all major roads in and out of the town from 7am to 7pm.  This blockade was to protest the conditions of their roads.   We were able to get into Potosi by taxi.  We had to walk once we got into town along with pretty much eveyrone else, but it was alright.  On a bit of  a chance decision we decided to head out of town a bit to this ¨little resort¨with natural hotsprings.  They place looked nice from the outside, and we thought that we would stay.  In the end the private and communal hotsprings were disgusting!  I am sure the place would have been nice 15 years ago when it was new, but at present things were not good.  We took off from there and headed back to Potosi for the night.  Tried to leave for Tupiza the next day, but the blockades reared their ugly head once again and we were stuck taking a night bus. Got to love night buses!

Got into Tupiza at 4am, sweet!  Tupiza is a small little town near the Argentinian border.  Also very near the resting place of Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid.  Didn´t really care about the story much until I got to the town, kind of surprising that they were in Bolivia at that time (1908).  It was nice being in a bit of a smaller town.  Good pace of life there.  We took a three hour horse ride in the afternoon just outside and rode by these amazing rock formations.  It was a good easy day.  Our big reason for going to Tupiza was to take a trip up through the Salar de Uyuni.  Got that all organized for the next day, and we were ready to go for four days and three nights.