30/5/09 We had to leave Sucre early, because there was going to be a sports car race around the main square on that day (there had been on the evening before as well) and we had to leave before the surrounding streets were closed off.
The bus climbed up and up into the Bolivian Altiplano, part of the Andes. Eventually we arrived at Potosi, the highest city of its size in the world, and from the moment I stepped off the bus I could feel the altitude. At this point it was just feeling a bit lightheaded; I didn't get a headache or feel sick. Dave said that he'd started feeling it for some time before we'd even arrived at Potosi. After settling our stuff into our hotel, which was big but not very nice, we decided as a group what to do for the rest of the day. We decided to do the tour of the mines that afternoon, and then whoever wanted to visit the hot springs could either do it before the mines or the next morning before we left for Uyuni. Dave and I didn't go to the hot springs because the mines were the main reason for coming here to begin with, and we'd already been to brilliant hot springs in New Zealand so it wasn't the end of the world if we didn't go to some here. It was freezing out, too, which discouraged us.
We all went out and had some brunch. Potosi is very hilly and we soon noticed the altitude in a different way, in that we all got out of breath really quickly. Dave and I had a Bolivian dish made of chips, pieces of chicken, pieces of beef, chunks of white cheese and egg, and some vegetables.
At 2.30 everyone went on the tour of one of the silver mines in the mountain behind Potosi. This mountain is nicknamed 'The mountain that eats men', because over the centuries since the first mine was opened there by the Spanish in 1545, thousands of men have died in the mines directly from accidents, as well as thousands more from silicosis, a result of all the dust and gases there. The present life expectancy of a miner here is only a few years, and conditions are almost primeval. The only health and safety rule that seem to apply there is the wearing of hard hats - the primative tunnels are supported by sagging wooden beams; they have antique wooden windlasses to get men down into shaft holes; they use dynamite simply by inserting it into the wall, dashing round the corner and waiting for it to explode; and in some mines they work completely by hand, in that they don't have any machines to tap into the rock. They wrap scarfs round their faces to try and keep out the dust, and they work 12 to 24 hour shifts at a time. They are paid absolute peanuts by British standards - only on average 200 Bolivianos a week; that's only about 19 pounds! They are paid by what ore they individually find, not by salary. Sadly, we found out that over 800 children still work in these mines, though from all accounts they aren't allowed to work in the most dangerous areas, and they work half the day and go to school in the rest.
Before we were driven up to the mines, we stopped at a shop to buy the miners some coca leaves, cigarettes and dynamite. It's considered a nice thing to do, because they have to pay for it all out of their own earnings, and although it's very cheap for us it's expensive for them. Dave in particular was amazed at being able to buy dynamite just like that, and for such a pittance! I was surprised too. I forgot to say before, but in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador (the Andean countries) coca leaves are an extremely important part of their indigenous culture, and have been for thousands of years. They do form the base for cocaine, but in these countries their importance goes way beyond that. (You need literally tons of it to form even an ounce of cocaine - just chewing a few doesn't give any cocaine effects, in case you're worried.) They ease pain, hunger, altitude sickness and tiredness, and are chewed at nearly every important stage of life, as well as at meetings, social meetups, and in the case of the miners in Potosi, before work every morning. Our local guide passed round a bowl of them in the minibus and we each sampled one or two. I can vouch that they taste rather bitter, though they did ease the lightheadedness a bit, and most of us didn't have any more. Our guide also passed round a bottle of 96% alcohol which the miners drink, and we took turns in wetting our lips on it. As soon as you do that, it evaporates. Surprisingly enough, nobody actually drank any!
It turned out that it was one of only three days in the year that the miners, and thus most of the rest of the town as well (because mining takes up such a large part of the local economy), celebrate a festival where they bless the mines by asking 'El Tio' (more of this later) for protection against mine accidents and for luck in finding ore, by sacrificing a couple of llamas at the mines entrances. They also drink a lot, have the day off and parade in the town. We didn't see the parades or the sacrifices, but we did see the aftermath of the latter. This comes later though, so I won't say about it yet. Due to the festival being on, only a few miners had chosen to work that day, so we went into a small mine where a couple of them were. In this mine most of the silver ran out long ago, so they now mainly mine for zinc, and all by hand tapping and some dynamite, not by machine. We saw two miners working, and one of them was the younger brother of the boy in the film we'd seen the day before. The film was made five years ago, so he was now 17. We heard that he only got paid 200 bolivianos for his part in the film, yet the producer got 1 million - absolutely disgraceful.
We were shown around most of the mine, and although apparently this is one of the safest mines to work in because it doesn't go as deep as some and doesn't have any poisonous gases, it's certainly not as sanitised as the ones we've visited in Britain. Several times we had to walk along paths full of loose and slippery stones with open shafts right next to them, and in a couple of places the air was full of dust. I bumped my head several times on the roof of the tunnels, but because I was wearing my hard hat I didn't get hurt. We were shown the shrines to 'El Tio' (the Devil) and 'Cochabamba' (the Earth Mother), and they are very spooky to look at. We had been told in the film the night before that the miners worship God everywhere outside the mines, but 'El Tio' within, because the mines are places where they believe to this day that God doesn't appear. Every mine has a model of El Tio inside, and the shrine is laden with offerings of coca leaves, cigarettes and food. It was the Spanish conquistadors who first introduced the idea of El Tio; they told the local Indians, who they forced to work in their silver mines in Potosi, that El Tio watched over them inside and that if they didn't work hard enough he would punish them. They called him El Tio instead of El Dio because the language the Indians spoke and still speak in some areas, Quechua, the letter 'D' doesn't appear. So even now El Tio still plays a large part in the miners' lives; they worship him inside the mines, asking him for luck and prevention from accidents in return for their offerings to him, despite all going to church and believing in God on the outside.
When we came back out into the open we walked past where they had sacrificed the llamas early that morning. There was blood on the stones, and there were still some people there. They were barbecueing some of the meat still, and when we walked up to a hut with lots of miners sitting inside, to see the blood smeared on the doorposts, they offered us some llama in a plastic bag, as well as potatoes which had been cooked in the ground. I tried some of both; the llama meat was lovely, but the potatoes less so. They also gave us some beers, which we had to drink in a certain way. The remains of the llamas had been placed in two wheelbarrows, which were just outside the hut, and whoever had a glass of beer, had to pour a little on the ground by each corner of both wheelbarrows, going anticlockwise, before downing the rest. The pouring on the floor was an offering to Cochabamba; apparently they always pour a little of whatever alcoholic drink they have on the ground for her before drinking the rest themselves.
The last thing we did before going back home was set off what dynamite we hadn't given away. Our guide and Jay placed it about 50 metres away by the mountain and lit it, and then ran back to the rest of us. It was about two minutes before it exploded, and took us all by surprise when it did. Nothing happened apart from a very loud bang and some smoke, and nobody got hurt.