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Published: February 26th 2007
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Potosi mines
With our bombs! Can you see the fear in our faces - i think not!! So off it was to Potosi - the highest city in the world. Everything in Bolivia is the highest something, whether it be the highest city, highest ruin, highest hotel, or even the highest Irish owned Bar. But take it from me, Potosi was bloody high. At around 4100m above sea level, it was once one of the richest cities in the world, due mainly to the abundant silver that was discovered in one of the mountains amidst the city centre. The Spaniards however, purged the hell out of the hill, and now it´s just a mix of tin and other elements. However, mining is still the major activity in town, and the reason that we decided to visit.
Us, being the lazy sods that we are, decided to catch a taxi from Sucre to Potosi instead of catching the bus, for a couple of hours of refined luxury. And at A$10 each for a 2.5 hour ride in a pristine Toyoto Camry, it was well worth the splurge. We arrived in Potosi, and booked into the Koala Hostel (it´s the small things from home hey), where the price was right, they were recommended, and they organised tours of the
mines, which we were going to do the next day. Over dinner that night, we sat down with our bibles (Lonely Planet and Footprint take a bow), and decided to radically alter our travel plans so that we could make it to Oruro in time for Carnival (Oruro supposedly being the best place to be, and every traveller we had met in the last week was making the journey there). The fact that it would involve numerous overnight buses in shitty Bolivian buses and that we had no accommodation booked there when it was apparantly all booked out was ignored for the time being. We´d deal with those minor details later.
The next morning, after getting no more than 3 hours sleep due to the altitude (it ain´t a pleasant thing to wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air and then not being able to crash out again for 4 hours let me tell you), we arose in preparation for our tour of the silver mines. We had heard alot about these tours, where you basically get to get down and dirty in the mines that are still in full operation to this day, and
check out the medieval working conditions these poor people are subjected to (OHS is definitely not a priority in Bolivia). The real attraction however, for me at least, was that you got the opportunity to buy dynamite, fuses, and ammonium nitrate, and make your own bomb that you got to blow up, all for around 2 dollars! Alright!
The mines were incredible - these poor guys, who work down in the mines from around the age of 13, have to crawl around in tiny tunnels, blowing up the mountain, all in search of miniscule amounts of metals. The income, which is around US$200 a month (good for Bolivian standards) is offset by the numerous lung diseases which they are inflicted by. The scrap, dig, and mine for around 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, depending on what they decide on, for around 30 years or so of their lives - hardcore stuff. And i thought watching movies at work and doing 8 hour days was tough. We watched them push the carts around the different levels, shovel rock into buckets, and scrape rock off the walls in nothing but a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and helmet,
while we rocked (jk) around in overalls, helmets, headlamps, facemasks etc etc. As the altitude is so bad, and the headaches, nausea etc so sickening even to these people, they continueosly have a wad of coca leaves stashed in their gum, whose juices allow them to combat these problems. We tried the coca, which at first was foul, but eventually became quite tasty and definitely did ward off the effects of the altitude. For the rest of the time i was in Bolivia, and it was readily available, i was hooked. Don´t worry mum, i´m not a drug addict now!
However the real highlight was the creation of our very own bombs. Pretty much, after we came out of the mines after 3 hours (which was well and truly enough), we were taken into a small shack as it was raining, and shown how to make our bombs (watch out US government - i now know what to do). Once they were created, the cheeky bastards who ran our tour lit our fuses without informing us of what to do, and so we were standing in this room dumbfounded, holding lit dynamite, whilst they told us that we should
take some photos. F@$k that!!! We ran outside as fast as our legs would take us, upon which our guides grabbed our killing machines out of our hands, much to our relief, and ran down the hill with them. After planting them in the ground, they sprinted back and giggled and screamed with the rest of us as they blew sizeable chunks out of the Bolivian landscape. I´ve said it once, and i´ll say it again......only in Bolivia.
After this, we rushed back to our hostel and booked our bus to Uyuni for that night (8 hours on an apparently very bumpy and uncomfortable road).
Next stop.....the Salt Plains.
Stay tuned.
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