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Published: February 3rd 2008
Well I have finally made it to the highest city in South America, that being Potosí. Potosí is set against the backdrop of a rainbow colored mountain, the Cerro Rici. The city was founded in 1545 following the discovery of ore deposits in the mountain, and Potosi´s veins proved the world´s most lucrative. By the end of the 18th century the streets were ´paved´with silver. Potosí grew into the largest and wealthiest city in Latin America, underwriting the Spanish economy for over two centuries.
Millions of indigenous people and imported African slaves labors were conscripted to work in the mines in appalling conditions, and millions of death occurred. Although the silver has been depleted, they continue to work in spine chilling conditions (of which I witnessed first hand) to extract minerals.
After arriving on a (very long) night bus and wandering around the city for an hour trying to find a hostel I finally got settled and set out in search of a mine tour. Unfortunately the tours were not running that day as it was a day for the ´festival of the miners´. So me and a couple of guys I met on the bus decided to head
Potosi
Dancing in the streetsout to the hot springs for a bit of relaxation before we hit the festival. After a nice soak in the natural lagoon we headed back into town where the festival was already in full swing. The streets were alive with dances and musicians. It was loud, chaotic and looked like heaps of fun. It seems that no festival in South America is complete without water balloons and foam spray. We decided to get in on the action so we armed ourselves with the foam spray and went out to attack some locals. Well, we kind of got a hammering, and they thought it was quite amusing to gang up on the gringos. And apparently the tradition is to gang up on the girls as well, so I coped it even worse. It was all fun and games until I got mobbed by about 20 blokes and ended up very very wet and foamy (and there were a few pitches on the bum as well which I didn´t really appreciate!) As it was freezing cold we retreated (defeated) back to the hostel to get on some dry clothes. We managed to keep out of the way of water balloons for
Potosi
Baby watching the parade the rest of the day thank god as I didn´t have any dry clothes left.
The next day the group of us booked to go on a mine tour. Well, I have decided that this is the ´worlds worst job´. The conditions are absolutely appalling. There is so much dust and the safety standards are definitely in need of a little OH&S. I really don´t know how these guys do it. We went down into the fourth level of the mine which involved scrambling and crawling in low, narrow, dirty shafts and climbing rickety ladders. At 4060m it was certainly hard work, and there were time where I started to struggle to breath started to panic just a little. You definitely don´t want to do this tour if you are asthmatic or claustrophobic. At the end of the tour we got to blow up some dynamite - yes the real stuff. Oh and once they light the fuse they give it to you to hold to take pictures with!! Hello - some one give these guys a course in safety!?!? But hey, it was pretty cool to blow stuff up.
It was a bit of a dilemma to
Potosi
Even the dances are not spared the water bombs and foam actually get out of Potosi. It is the rainy season in Bolivia and the road arn´t much chop so alot of the time you get stranded in places until the weather clears and there isn´t any water on the roads. We were heading to Uyuni next and the road in unpaved all the way. For the last two days while we were in Potosi no one had been able to get to Uyuni. Lucky for us the next day the road was clear and off we went on a bumpy 7 - 20 hour bus ride to Uyuni. (I say 7 - 20 hours cause you never know what will happen in Bolivia).
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