Potosi, Bolivia

Danger was the theme for our two day trip to Potosi which kicked off with a rough and rugged 7-hr bus ride from Uyuni with our Salar de Uyuni friends David and Merryn. The bus was old and clunked back and forth through so many hellish switchbacks that Charlotte's colon was writing IOU's by the time we arrived in Potosi.

Potosi is the highest city in the world at 4060m (14,000ft). In the 1600s it was the richest city in South America thanks to a large silver deposit that was discovered in Cerro Rico, the mountan that overlooks the city. Legend has it the city's streets used to be paved in silver, though we didn't see any sign of this. A lot has changed since Potosi's boom days, however, a few things have stayed the same such as:
1) It's easier to find/purchase dynamite and ammonium nitrate at a corner shop than it is find a cold Coca Cola
2) Ore extraction (mining practices) have not changed much in 700 years as we would soon find out.

We arrived around 11PM and were able to get double rooms with ensuites at the Koala Den ($150B/n -hot showers included!) We crashed out almost immediately and the following morning booked a tour of the (in)famous Potosi mines. Our tour started at 1.30PM, and when we showed up at the offices a little early for the tour I noticed the particularly solemn and shell shocked expressions on people's faces who'd just finished the morning tour. Regardless, we suited up into our mine-touring outfits: helmet, light, boots, shirt & pants (emergency respiratory kit noticeably absent) and set off towards the first stop of the tour: the miner's market. At the miner's market we purchased coca leaves, alcohol and dynamite as gifts for the miners whom we'd be visiting later in the day. The miners chew the coca leaves as a substitue for meals and coffee throughout their 12-18hr shifts; they give the alcohol as an offering devil-god, Tio, whom they say protects them while they work and gives silver to the faithful; and they use the dynamite for obvious purposes.

After visiting the miner's market we went to the city's main ore processing plant where the rocks that the miners extract are crushed and mixed into a chemical bath. The silver ore and other metals then gravity-seperate in pools and the raw ore is collected and shipped to Japan, Europe, etc. for smelting. It was a pretty old-school setup but seemed pretty typical of a Bolivian industrial process.

After the processing plant we took a bus to the entrance of the mine we'd be visiting that afternoon. Our guide, Ronaldo, pointed out some large, dark red stains above the entrance to the mine on our wy in. These he said were blood stains from the llama they had recently sacrificed as an offering to Tio. If I'd had a llama with me at the time I'd probably have sacrificed it as well because this is where the tour got pretty interesting.

We walked about 800m into the first level of the mine in a horizontal shaft thar was about 1.2m wide by 1.5m tall. I hit my head (helmet) over a dozen times on the low outcroppings where tunnel collapses had beem patched up -not a welcome site asvwe decended further into the mine. We arrived at our first stop where Ronaldo gave us a demonstration of a dynamite blast. This involved hiking a further 50m into a passage, David lighting the 2-minute fuse, and all of us running back to our original spot to await the blast. When the blast it did not dissapoint. The sound bellowed and echoed throughout the mine, and the pressure wave nearly knocked us over. I captured the blast on video onour camera which I'll post on Facebook soon. We then continued further into the mine, literally crawling through spaces that could barely accomodate a person of my size, and arrived at the sweltering 3rd level of the mine (40C+). Along the way we met a few of the miners, including a 17 year old boy who'd been working there for 5 years, and saw a picture of a guy at one of the trolley stations whom must have recently died there. At this stage the air was getting much more difficult to breathe as it was thick with asbestos and silica particles that we'd kicked up while we crawled. We began our ascent back up to level 1 and after a difficult cllimb and a 100m optional 'shortcut' crawl through a space that could best be described as a very long coffin, we arrived back at the entrance of the mine glad to have finished the tour. We were pretty dirty from all the crawling, and Charlotte's voice had turned into a tranny one from the dust-filled air, so we thought we'd go for a few beers to wash oursleves clean of the mine.

After a few beers and a meal Charlotte and I took a cab to the bus terminal only to find that we were an hour late for our 12-hr bus to La Paz and so had to spend another night in Danger-town.

The next morning we caught a 6-hr bus to Oruro and overnighted there en route to the Bolivian capital city of La Paz.