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Published: March 10th 2007
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I was glad to get out of Cochabamba when I could. Even when the holidays ended and the city came back to life, it still didn't change my mind that I just didn't like it there. I'm not alone though. Many have told me the same. It was a huge relief to go next to Sucre, probably the most beautiful city I have visited so far. It's called the ¨White City¨ because all the buildings are painted white. The city has an old colonial feel but is still very modern. I loved Sucre for its tranquility, its beauty and its people. Not that it had been bad before, but I felt really comfortable in a city which really does see a lot of tourists. I could have stayed there for a month and probably not even noticed. When I got off the bus upon my arrival, I met a girl from Holland and we proceeded to find a hotel and explore the city. Sucre has an impressive amount of good museums, including the ¨House of Liberty¨ which had the first Congress and where Bolivia's Declaration of Independence was signed. The Textile Museum has many ancient weavings of the Jall´qa culture which
Bolivian President Evo Morales
He isn't all too popular actually, depending on who you ask of course are, to say the least, priceless. I was also able to visit the nearby Dinosaur Park, which has several life-size models of dinosaurs that roamed near what is today Sucre. The most interesting part was the footprints of various dinosaurs that could still be seen.
Bolivia as a country is small enough that coincidences occur almost too often. In La Paz I saw a group of Europeans that I had met in Copacabana, Bolivia, and if you remember the two crazy Germans from my Lake Titicaca trip, well....I saw them too. I walked into a random Internet cafe in La Paz and there they were. Somehow one of them had managed to lose their passport and they were desperately trying to fix the situation. In Sucre, I met my friend Mike that I had met about 3 to 4 weeks before, in Arequipa, Peru. This was in a downtown restaurant. Strange. The most bizarre though would be seeing the Argentinean woman I had met in Northern Peru 5 weeks later ib walking the streets of Sucre. To me the coincidences were almost scary. But I'm not done...when I was in Potosi, two people on a museum tour with me
Boo!
A mummy at the Archaeology Museum in Sucre ended up being in my tour group for the Salar de Uyuni (for my next entry). Hmmm....
After Sucre it was time to go to Potosi, at about 4000m (13,123 feet). The altitude affected me immediately, and my first day there was mostly spent being sick. As Mr. Vonnegut would say, ¨So it goes.¨
Potosi is essentially a mining town, and in the 1500s it was the richest city in the world. Now it seems to struggle to survive. Potosi is even more colonial-like than Sucre, and the narrow streets made even walking without getting run over by cars a challenge. The ¨sidewalks¨ could barely even be called that. The two biggest attractions in Potosi are the Casa de la Moneda (The old Mint) and the mines of Cerro Rico (Rich Hill) overlooking the city. The Mint Museum showcases how coins used to be made in Bolivia up to about a hundred years ago. The methods used are certainly archaic and cruel even, as mostly African slaves were the ones who manufactured the coins under dangerous conditions.
The highlight of Potosi for me was doing a tour of the mines. Thousands of men in Potosi work
in the mines under dangerous and, upon witnessing what they do, horrifying conditions. The life expectancy of a miner in Potosi is much lower than average. The dangerous equipment used and the contaminated air inside the mines combine to create a life expectancy of only about 50 to 55 years of age. Often miners can only work for 5 to 10 years in the mines before they have to retire due to illness, most often respiratory problems. Nevertheless many young men go to work in the mines because they have few other options in a city with a struggling economy.
Before I entered the mines, the others in my tour group and I had to go to the miner's market to buy gifts for them. The miners earn little and any gifts they get are appreciated. The most common are coca leaves and soda. The mines are too contaminated and dirty to eat any food inside, so the only option that most miners have is to chew coca leaves all day, which keeps them energized and keeps their appetite down. Almost every miner I saw had a bulging cheek from all the coca leaves they were chewing. To them
An offering to Pachamama (Mother Earth)
It seems odd to me to use soda bottles to make a spiritual offering, but hey...what do I know. it is sacred. When mining first began hundreds of years ago, bosses made it mandatory to chew coca leaves because they knew it could keep the miners going all day long. We were able to see how they use trolleys to transport the minerals they extract (mostly silver and zinc) and how they drill straight into the rock in search of silver. Another side trip took me up 10 ladders (10!) that seemed to go on forever. At the top I met a man they called ¨The Terrorist.¨ Every miner has his own nickname. I was a little too apprehensive to even think of asking why he had said name. I'll never know...and I probably didn't want to.
When it was time for some good ol' fashioned dynamite, our guide got really excited. ¨Let's some blow $@%! up¨ he shouted in his broken English. Of course we could be nowhere near the dynamite when it exploded, but we indeed felt the ground shake and rumble when the first few sticks were detonated.
At the end of the tour the guide took us to see El Tio (The Uncle) who acts as the protector of the miners. He actually
is the devil, but no one calls him that. As you can see from the picture, he's pretty strange looking, with quite a large, err, package overall. When we were back in the sunlight, the guide asked me the obligatory ¨Como te fue?¨ (How was it?) The question had been asked of me so many times already on all my treks, trips and sightseeing, and I gave an automatic response of ¨muy bonito¨ (very pretty). He gave me a strange look, and I immediately realized that I had made a big mistake. How could I say that seeing the mines was beautiful, when there is so much pain and suffering within? Automatic response or not, I should've chosen my words more carefully.
My trip by the numbers:
Number of coincidences of running into people I had met before...too many to count (at least 10)
Times I have gotten sick thus far...3
Total number of cities and towns visited thus far (not including small side trips)...12
Height of Sucre...2700m
Height of Potosi...4000m
Average monthly salary of Bolivians...500 Bolivianos ($62)
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anonymous
non-member comment
haha! nice picture with El Tio, man! and yea.. his schwang is quite girthy--not gonna lie. anyhow, you really know your latin american history. also, yeah, the mining conditions of potosi are HORRID... like, nasty bad. but, hey, too bad no president ever comes in who ACTUALLY cares about helping. how do miners and people of the sort view Evo Morales?