Blogs from Potosí Department, Bolivia, South America - page 135

The salt flats were fabulous-probably our favouirite part of Boliva!... read more

When I arrived to Potosi I needed a couple of days to acclimatize before I could do anything, after all it's not that easy to breathe at 4070m. The main attraction here is the mine tour, in which you can go with a guide into an active mine, and observe how the mine operates. The tour is physically demanding as the mine is narrow and low, and you sometimes need to climb and crawl to get from one section to another. Add to this the fact that the air is full of dust from the excavation process, and that there isn't too much air anyway and you'll get a nice and pleasant environment. The tour started at the miners market. There we had to buy a few supplies - soft drinks and coca leaves, gifts for ... read more

Hazardous to your health, mining in Potosi: the colonial way or is it the Bolivian way? As you may notice this entry is long overdue - essentially dropped the ball on Potosi, but then again no love lost there on either side. It is a fascinating historic town but essentially located beside what looks like the surface of the Moon, a landscape of bleak rock over 4000 metres (12000 ft) high, where basic foodstuffs are somewhat limited - very tough to get any milk - and all roads lead to the mines... Like everyone else does when they come here, we took a tour. Not much seems to have changed here (las minas) over the years with the exception of head lights vs burning candles and plastic rubber vs animal hide to transfer minerals from one ... read more

Potosi owns a couple of superlatives. It’s the world’s highest city at 4070m, was once the riches city in South America and once had more inhabitants than London or Paris. That Potosi was founded in 1545 is thanks to the Cerro Rico “Rich Mountain” which contained huge amounts of Silver. The Silver content of the ore mined exceeded up to 70 percent. Today the content of metals is a maximum of 30 percent and always a mixture of different metals. Millions of Indian labourers were forced to work in the mines and many of them died young due to appealing conditions and mercury poisoning (Mercury was used to separate the silver from the stone.) The good silver ore depleted sometime around 1800 which led to a steady decline of the city. Today there are still over ... read more

From Salta we went North, North, North on to Bolivia. What a change of scenery! Bolivia, Bolivia Bolivia. Very little infrastructure hot during the day and extremely cold at night. This is one of the highest countries in the world. We walked with our backpacks over the border, got a couple of stamps in our passports and suddenly there we were, tired hot and hungry with absolutely no Bolivianos. (Cash) We rested in a typical Bolivian restaurant with random pictures on the wall. When you ask for a menu they look at you like you´re an alien. Most of the time we just pointed at what the locals were having as this seems to be the only thing there is. Meat and rice with a water. We needed to make a sharp exit with our Israeli ... read more