2790m
This morning we managed to have a relaxed breakfast, check out and then wait in the lobby for our Spanish speaking driver. To our amazement our guide was Dirk, from the Netherlands who speaks English as well as Spanish and Dutch and he was going to be with us for the next 3 days. This means that he will be driving us to La Paz as well, getting us through the hurdles of language.
We drove through Uyuni listening to his history of being in Bolivia (tourist travelling through Hualpa (the village next to Tayka Del Sol) and met his future wife. He drives a Mitsubishi because he worked for them for a long time in Holland and can completely service them himself. He works for Kaleidoscope, he and his wife own and run a restaurant and kept it going through COVID by doing a delivery service, he realised that a lot of people in Sucre (where he lives) have coffee machines and no one knows how to service them so he studied the basics and now runs a coffee machine service business.
We travelled along the Andes passing various mines, some old, some still working, and at one we were told was the last job that Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid were involved in. They stayed at the local hotel and signed in with their real names to scope out the joint and then held up the paymaster and his single guard, took the money, cut the horses loose and ran. Unfortunately for the duo the paymaster just so happened to come across a troop of Bolivian troopers who chased down the pair. The story, as with the film with Robert Redford and Paul Newman shows them both going down. However…. there is only a grave for The Sundance Kid, not Cassidy! Must watch the film ‘Blackthorne’ when I return home.
The stories continued as we drove and saw a couple of ostrich and a large number of vicuñas. We crossed over the watershed and went through a wide open valley with hundreds of llamas and masses of birds. Turns out that Dirk is quite the enthusiastic bird watcher and runs tours around Bolivia chasing them down.
We arrived in Potosi which is famous for Centro Rico (rich mountain) and that’s about it. It has some of the feel of a western mining town (without the guns). We were dropped off by Dirk in the main square and directed to ‘4060’, a restaurant named after the altitude it is at. Dirk went off to park the car in a secure location. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed so we waited for Dirk and he took us to a restaurant around the corner, phoning Johnny who was our guide for the tour of the mine. Just imagine what would have happened if we only had a Spanish speaking guide.
Lunch over (a dish with chicken, beef, chips, onion, capsicum and rice) we got picked up by Johnny and driven to the main square to pick up 4 other tourists; 2 from Holland, 2 from Belgium. Johnny starts instructing us on what the expectations are. Charlie starts talking loudly to the 4 new passengers about where they are from. Johnny asks Charlie to be quiet. Charlie ignores Johnny and loudly starts telling the new passengers where we are from. Hmm. I wondered how long it would take.
We get to Johnny’s shop and get dressed in trousers, plastic bags for over our socks, boots, jackets and helmets. Suitably kitted up we drive to the miner’s market where we have to buy gifts for the miners. And, of course, sample some of this. “This is the coca leaf, you bite like this”. Hands me the bag to try. Shreds coca leaf from stem and chew on leaf. “Wait!” says Johnny, “better with this.” And hands me a black rock. I take a nibble. It consists of potato, ash and mint and makes the mush sitting in my cheek taste better. “Now we have to bless Pachamama.” and pulls out a little bottle of 96% alcohol. Fills the lid, pours a little to the north, south, east and west and then sculls the remainder. Cap is refilled and handed to me. All eyes from the other 6 tourists are focused on me. Scull capful. Fran looks and asks what it’s like. Better than Russian vodka. Everyone has a try. We bought juice packets, water packets, bananas, packets of coca leaves (complete with little bottles of 96% pure alcohol) and get back in the van to drive to the mine.
At the mine Johnny gets us to hand out the gifts to the miners (coca leaves for the miners about to go on shift, juice or water and bananas for those who have finished). The alcohol is kept for later. We enter the mine entrance at about 4600m in altitude and scramble down through a small hole and go backwards down a wooden ladder for around 5m. Once down anyone over 1.2m has to bend over and crawl? stoop? hobble? over 20m to the next part. This bit being carved steps in the floor going down another 8m. Of course, most Bolivians don’t have size 12 feet and as such the steps are a bit small. Added to which there is dust on the steps and you are wearing gum boots and a helmet which slips a bit. Once down this obstacle it is a short crawl through a hole about 80cm in height which rises back up to the usual 1.2m. Go down a tunnel for 40m, take a left fork, go carefully down onto a wooden plank over a 6m hole, veer right to avoid another hole in the floor (this one with an 8m ladder to the next level), 4m on take a right again for 30m and we reach the end of the passage. Time for a talk. Ok, shoring? Non existent. Power? Non existent. Pumped fresh air? Non existent. Safety? I think you can guess. However, that bit gets worse. Far worse. Johnny explains that only the single Level 1 miner has any medical coverage. Only Level 1 and 2 are allowed to set the dynamite and receive pay based on the quantity and quality of ore they extract. Level 3 miners are there to transport the ore and earn about $63 per day, assuming an 8 hour shift. Right. The Level 1 and Level 2 miners dig the holes using compressed air 2m into the wall to place your stick of dynamite, bag of ammonium nitrate and finally blasting cap. You then light the fuses and run? down the tunnel around 160m. They don’t clear the tunnels. God no, if you did that you wouldn’t hear the different explosions going off. And would there be other miners working while you were blasting? Oh yes, blasting happens at some time between 12:00 and 16:00. And how many tunnels are there under the mountain? Over 2000km. And how deep? Up to 400m below us (they would have gone deeper but they run into water). Ok, to some up; you are blasting by lighting a fuse with miners in the same tunnels and others which could be above, below or to the sides? Yes. Wouldn’t it be easier and safer for the bosses to all get together and just mine from the top down without tunnelling? Oh no! Cerro Rico is a national monument and sacred to the people of Bolivia and we want nothing to do with your imperialistic capitalistic ideas! Hmm, how much of a national monument will it be when the thing collapses and kills well over 2000 people. The top of the mountain has already subsisted over 200m. What about the 96% alcohol that you brought? There is a shrine in every mine to the Bolivian god of mining and you place offerings to it after your shift; a handful of coca leaves, some cigarettes and the alcohol (96% pure because you want to receive pure ore). The rest of the bottle they drink. On a mine site.
Leaving the mine we are driven by Johnny’s brother to where Dirk should be, except he isn’t. We drove in ever widening circles around the Cathedral of San Francisco until we spot the car. He had told Johnny that he would be 2 blocks south of San Francisco but this hadn’t been imparted to his brother.
It was a 3 hour drive to Sucre so we arrived at the hotel around 8 to be informed that as the hotel was now fully booked we couldn’t get a table for dinner. As such we went down the road to a small cafe which served pizza.