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Published: March 4th 2006
We're back!!
Let us try and fill you in quickly with what we've done in the past week:
Today we arrived in Potosi,
the world's highest town at 4070m! We weren't here long but just enough time to visit the famous silver mines on which the people here prospered for years.
As you can imagine, the mines are dark and damp, and pretty claustrophobic if you stay too long. The miners work long hours though, earning about 3 pounds a day for what is hard and monotonous work. As part of the tour we bought them all a bag of presents, consisting of:
2 packets of biscuits - to munch on
A bag of cocoa leaves - chewing on these helps ward off hunger, cold, pain and altitude sickness
A stick of dynamite - just to make their job a bit easier
It is rather sad to witness the conditions these people have to work in. Also, due to the chemicals that they are exposed to in the mines every day, miners are only expected to live another ten years after having started. However, the town is so poor that the people here have
no other choice.
After the miners lit 3 sticks of dynamite while we were still
inside the mine, to show us how hard the walls vibrated, we were given a demonstration of one
outside. Our guide wrapped the dynamite in a special material, put it in an empty bottle of a drink the miners like to have (it's 96%!s(MISSING)trong, i dipped my tongue in it and it took my breath away - I was tipsy three minutes later!), then lit the fuse. She then gave it to me to hold! A nervous photo later, she deposited it far away so we could witness the IMMENSE explosion! It shocked us all you can't imagine how loud it was!
That evening we enjoyed the night train to Oruro, to spend the next day at Bolivia's finest Carnival location.....
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LIttle India
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OMG
Was the God-Devil(aka devil?) called George? And was the guide called Freddy? I wana go travelling!!!!!!