silver mines and spanish

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Hi guys last time i left you i had just come across the salar and was heading to potosi. (Of course most of you will know that this is being written well behind schedule and i have spent 6 weeks in the jungle with a big cat since then, however suspend your disbelief and read on. Death defying jaguar stories will follow at some point!!!)

The journey to potosi must have been one of the worst bus trips of my life, having been treated to the superb buses of Argentina and the reasonable buses of patagonia and chile i was now heading for the bus graveyard that is bolivia. The 5 hour bus journey took 7 and a half due to the fact that all buses in bolivia inevitably break down. It was all above 4000m, freezing cold and incredibly cramped in a bus filled with far too many bolivians, who without casting unneccesary dispersions are not that inclined to bathe in freezing cold water, (and who could blame them) but hence in large numbers within confined spaces can give rise to a pungent odour. The solution is to open all the windows which allows in more sub freezing air. Of course being dressed in my shorts and t-shirt which were adequate in the sunny day on the salar but somewhat less than would be desired at two in the morning on a bus didn't help.

Having eventually arrived in potosi i checked into a pretty cool hostel and arranged a tour of the famous mines the next day. Basically potosi is dominated by a mountain called cerro rico (rich mountain). Here silver was discovered in the middle of the 16th century allegedly by a shepherd that went looking for a lost sheep and lit a fire against the cold. Legend has it that the fire was on top of a rich vein of silver ore and the shepherd noticed the next morning silver that had been melted out of the ore. Sounds a bit unlikely but back then there was a lot of almost pure silver in the mountain so fairly possible. Anyway ever since the spanish who controlled the area have put the local population as well as a fair number of black slaves shipped into the area to work extracting as much silver as they possibly can. So much was extracted that in the 17th and 18th centuries potosi was one of the richest cities in the world. Not too surprisingly as the amount of silver in the mountain has diminished that is not quite the case today however the city does have some nice buildings and churches in memory of the glory days.

The city is at 4200m and on a steep hill so wandering around can take it's toll. It is also a complete maze which while fun can get frustrating when lost, tired and desperately wanting to sit down. Having looked around in the morning I went for lunch with a couple of english girls from the hostel. Zoe who was really cool and lived in wimbledon, actually she is a bar maid in the lounge bar, in the village which was something of a coincidence. The other was katy a mildly irritating girl from saffron walden. It turned out that zoe was on my tour, and during the course of lunch zoe persuaded katy to join us. The tour is led by ex miners who have worked in the mines but escaped the unbelievably harsh conditions by learning english and becoming tour guides. It means they know people in the mines (The father of our guide still worked in the mine!) and have a good understanding of what goes on. After donning some particularly fetching protective clothing we visited the miners market. Here we bought some presents for the miners.

Mostly they just want soft drinks as it is incredibly hot in the mines and obviously doing hard manual labour the miners become very dehydrated. Also coca leaves and alcohol. They drink industrial 96% by volume spirit, which has more to be recommended for it's ability to get you pissed than the subtlety of flavour (obviously i had to try anything that could be given to the miners!). The best present though was a completo (this is everything you need to create a bomb, or explosive charge for the unromantic.) Basically you get a stick of dynamite, a fuse, and a bag of ammonium nitrate beads for the princely sum of 17 bolivianos just over 1 pound sterling. Having aquired our presents we set off to the mines. The mountain is riddled with mines after 400 years of mining and from the outside it looks rather like an overgrown slag heap nothing but coloured rock and debris (those of you that have visited wales will know what i mean!!!).

First we had a demonstration of how effective a completo could be. Not wanting to miss out i had a crack at making one too. Basically you take the stick of dynamite and roll it in you hands to loosen the dynamite from the paper. Then you unroll it and break the stick into thirds. fold a strip over on the paper and reroll the dynamite in it tamping it down firmly. Then add the fuse and twist the original dynamite paper. all thats left is to pour the ammonium nitrate beads into the carrier bag that the whole thing handily came in and tie these around the dynamite stick, this will greatly increase the explosive power of the bomb. Then simply light and smile for the photo. Zoe took some photos for me while i was doing this you will spot the tongue out concentration required to perform such a feat. I was going to take some video of the explosion when the miners ran off with our bombs to let them explode, unfortunately the bang was so loud that i jumped so badly the video doesn't show anything, still what can you do!

After our little intro and chewing some coca leaves to help with the altitude and claustrophobia to come, we set off into the mines. Well almost, we had to wait for some miners pushing a trolley along the incredibly rickety rails first. As soon as you enter the mines there are electricity cables hanging all over the place, often with exposed wires with water dripping on them, the tunnel is low and claustrophobic and the floor is wet and muddy. The miners that push wagons loaded with ore at breakneck speed to avoid losing momentum along these rails around corners while ducking electric cables and running in mud must have one of the hardest jobs in the mines. We walked on for a little while, i was getting quite excited at finding little veins of minerals in the tunnel walls, until we reached a small side passage. This was the entrance to the museum. The first thing in the museum is a statue of tio. He is basically the devil and the miners while good christians above ground pray to tio while under the ground for safety and good luck. Basically he is basically closer so they hedge their bets. The statue is quite impressive and can be seen in the potossi and sucre photos i sent around. There are also a few exhibits of mining technology in the museum but the most amazing things are reports of the various miners strikes that have hapened as the local labour force tries to improve their basically slave labour conditions. Each strike was brutally put down with hundreds of deaths by the police or army. It actually makes maggie thatcher seem reasonable!!!

After the museum we carried on through the levels of the mine. On the first level there were a load of huge stalactites hanging from the ceiling that were formed from copper sulphate they were extremely beautiful and as a geologist i couldn't help but inspect them closely. I asked what the little white needle crystals on them were and was a little surprised to hear they were arsenic crystals maybe the face mask would have been a good investment for 1 boliviano after all! The descent to the next level was basically scrambling down a 45degree chute on your hands and knees and the level had to be scrambled along as the ceiling was so low, this significantly added to the feeling of claustrophobia, but it widened out after a while and on we went. Katy the mildly annoying girl from saffron walden had decided she was asthmatic and was telling us all about it for some time. Fortunately at this poiunt she decided it was all a bit much, not too disappointing from my point of view. Still having trimmed the group down to a much more acceptable level we carried on down to the third level where i helped shovel some ore into a big bucket to be hauled to the surface. The miners found it highly amusing that i would willingly shovel ore but were enthusiastic in their praise of my style as long as i kept doing it!!!

Then after a descent down two ridiculously rickety ladders over a huge hole (which was somewhat reminiscent of what dad would have rigged up to carry heavy metal joists to the roof) we got to the fourth level. Here it was really hot as we were quite deep. A miner was working digging holes to put explosives in. Each hole took him over two hours to dig he only had a chisel and a hammer. He needed to dig 14 holes before blasting the ore then had to shovel it into bags and carry it to he surface. We gave him some explosives similar to those i had blown up at the surface and in return i chose a bit of his ore. It has loads of silver and galena in it so i was quite excited. Of course i am meant to send it home but have been carrying it for the last 3 months. We were told that if his vein of ore were to connect to a tunnel where other miners were working then the bigger group would take over the ore and he would be forced to leave. Sometimes two big groups meet in this way and then they have big fights. Apparently dynamite gets thrown into each others tunnels and the whole thing gets pretty unpleasant.

While we were down there blasts started going off on the levels above us. Technically this shouldn't happen for another hour or so but what are you to do. The tunnels fill with dust and breathing is pretty hard. On the way out we were climbing from a chute, zoe was ahead of me and hit her head and fell back down. Luckily i caught her but it is easy to see how bad accidents could happen in the mines and they do all the time. The average miner lasts just 10 years before dying of lung problems, or contact with noxious chemicals. The youngest miners in the mines are only 14 and could be dead by the time they are 24 it is a hard way to earn a living.

After the mines we visited the plant where they extract the ore from the rock, basically they crush it and add a few chemicals. The machinery is ridiculously basic but quite impressive in its simplicity. A miner gets payed 2000 bolivianos for 10 tonnes of ore of which 40% is actual metal compounds. That same 10 tonnes is worth 64000 bolivianos after simple processing. The miners set up some processing units as a collective but for some reason they aren't very efficient so all the profit still goes to rich processing plant owners despite the terrible conditions the miners work in.

After potossi i headed to sucre which is a beautiful little university town that used to be the capital of bolivia. The bus i took on the way was supposed to take 3 hours. After 2 hours there was a smell of smoke and we stopped. When i got out i saw the front wheel was glowing red, i asked the driver whether there was a fire and he replied that it was only hot, after throwing some water on it everyone got off the bus and the bolivians quietly urinated against the wheel to cool it down. 10 minutes later we were driving off, clearly a common occurance then!!!

About 5 kilometers down the road the tyre blew (not that surprisingly) upon inspection the brake disc had been locked in position so the brake had been on all the way through the mountain descent. My leatherman and torch came in handy as they had no torch or way of tightening screws. It earned me a few gringo points but showed just how bad the buses in bolivia were going to be. A considerable amount of praying later and we made it into Sucre although i spent the next two days ill in bed with some distinctly dodgy food poisoning. Not many things have given me trouble in south america but something definately went wrong there.

In sucre i spent two weeks learning spanish. THe hostal i was staying in was a pretty cool old style colonial building and a few people there were learning spanish so we had a bit of a posse going. This was the first time i had spent more than a few days with the same people so it was nice. Tom who was a geordie ex-rugby player was paragliding his way around south america. I almost got a go on his paraglider but the take off site we went to was rubbish. However he did pretty much convince me that i needed to go to Iquique and do some paragliding after the pitiful effort at learning which is trying to do any airsport in the UK.

There were also a couple of aussies mel and tim. It was tim that i did my first week of spanish lessons with. He was hilarious and constantly trying to get hold of some weed to smoke. On our second day together me, him and a canadian guy had gone on one of tim's missions. After a short conversation with some young bolivian guy who was so wasted he could barely stand, the guy picked up two bottles, smashed them and started chasing us through the streets. This must have been the slowest motion chase of all time, the guy chasing us was completely hammered, however sucre is at altitude and we were all unfit after months of travelling and smoking and minimal exercise. At one point the canadian guy stopped to take his sandals off which gives an indication of how slowly we were running.

Luckily Sucre was really chilled as long as tim didn't talk to the locals, so generally the most that happened was we went out for a few drinks then went home bought bottles of spirits and played cards while getting pissed. Then got up learnt some spanish with a hangover and repeated the process. There wasn't much else to do except for the legendary dinosaur footprint tour which took a couple of hours and provided some pretty good photos!

After sucre it was to the park and some jaguar jungle action the subject of my next blog.

From sucre i made

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