Playing with Dynamite...

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We had a relatively uneventful bus ride from Sucre to Potosi which was only interrupted by a flat tyre meaning we all had to get off the bus and wait for a combi minivan to come past and take us the final 1 hour to our destination. Potosi is the highest city in the world resting at a mere 4,090m above sea level and is famous for backpackers to do one thing.. visit the mines and play with dynamite!

We hadn´t planned to spend very long here so were glad when we found an agency that had places on their 2pm tour and we could leave the city following day. W got ourselves booked on in a small group with just 3 other people, 2 from France and one from Israel.

Our little minibus left the office on time and our first stop was the miners shops which are like no other shops you are likely to see in the world. In these shops the tour groups can purchase presents to take into the mines for the hard working miners. Presents like cocoa leaves, fizzy pop, cigarettes are all normal to purchase so we brought a selection to take with us. The very best thing that you can buy though are sticks of dynamite.. just like that! No need for a certificate or anything you just ask for a stick, ignition and some pink stuff that apparently makes it all bang a lot more and all for the very reasonable price of 10Bs (£90p). So of course we all brought some to play with after the tour!

Off we went to towards the mines but stopped off again to don our very sexy mining outfits which consisted of orange overalls, wellingtons, hard hat and head torch, we all looked the business. As we got to the mines it was a very desolate sight and not the nicest of places to have to get up to work for each morning. We all entered the mine shaft and Dale was instantly disappointed that the tour office had lied to him and that the shafts were in fact not all suitable for people over 6ft to stand upright in so he spent much of the tour doubled over.

The mines were incredible though, we walked approximately 2km inside the mountain and to the centre of the mine, at times it was quite scary as 2 ton trolleys full of tin, lead, silver and copper were wheeled past us at speed and we had to jump to the side to avoid being flattened, it was a little bit like being in an Indiana Jones movie!

At one point we all had to get down on our hands & knees to crawl through a 5m tunnel one by one and yet again Sophie regretted watching so many horror movies as she was the one at the back. This is definately not a tour for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia because you feel very enclosed and walking 2km into mines where some parts of the tunnels are being held up by very dangerous wooden contraptions and having to wade in water up to your knees is not everybodys idea of fun. Dale also constantly kept bumping his head and was glad of the hard hat that had been provided with. It can get very dusty and hot in the mines and even after 1 hour of being in there we all felt the dust on our lungs so it's hard to imagine what it must be like working in these conditions day in day out. The life expectancy of a miner is sadly only about 35, this is due to the dust which contains aspestos and makes them too ill to work after this time.

It was a very intersting tour though and the miners, although very shy were very grateful of the gifts that we gave them. Not surprisingly the cocoa leaves were the winning gift with them all constantly asking if we had anymore. They were all happy to answer our questions and teach us a bit about what they have to do and where the materials we all take for granted come from.

The mines truly are horrible places to work and it saddened us when we found a boy of just 14 working in there in swealtering heat covered in dust. His father had died and he told us that he had to work in the mines so he could feed his mother and family. The majority do work there out of choice though and we were all told that the pay is actually quite good for Bolivian standards which explains why there are up to 15,000 of them working in co-operative groups at any one time..

So we exited the mine after about 3 hours of being in there, first freezing and then boiling in temperatures which can reach 50 degrees in the height of summer. We were all quite excited about the next event as we were going to blow up our stick of dynamite.. well our tour guide was anyway!

She set about unwrapping the dynamite and rolling it into a ball, next she inserted the ignition into the ball and put the 2 items into a small plastic bag with the pink stuff (still no idea what this was!). After roughly measuring the ignition tape with her hands, to presumably find out how long she had before she got blown to pieces, we made our way to the quarry area where we´d get to have a play with a leathal explosive. She took several attempts to light it while we all took steps further and further back (some taking bigger steps than others....Sophie!). Once lit she held it out to us to see who wanted a photo taken with a deadly lit device that could go at any second! Dale of course took up the challenge and we are pleased to say he lived to tell the tale. She then ran off into the distance, had enough time to dig a hole, decide it wasn´t big enough so dug another and then walked casually back to us all watching with open mouths.

So we waited... and waited.. and waited... Then about 5 explosions went off just behind us when we were least expecting it.. another tour group trying the same experiment. We all thought something had gone drasticaly wrong and went to hit the deck.. then BOOM! ours went off too! For a small moment It felt like we were in the middle of a Baghdad! The most perfect smoke circle going up to the sky afterwards was amazing to see..

We were all so shocked that you can just go into a shop and play with a highly powerful explosive just like that.... It´s one of the things that has amazed us so much around Bolivia that you can just do pretty much anything you want, people just get on with it without having to conduct a risk assessment and method statement for every move they make.

Potosi was great but we´d done what we wanted to do and it was time to leave so we made our way to another long waited highlight of our trip.. the Salt Flats of Uyuni....

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Photos

Diablo figure
The miners give gifts to this figure to ensure that they are safe in their work. There was even a llama feotus there!