Dynamite and Cyanide in the World's Highest City - Potosi

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There are a few towns and certainly a few villages found higher in the world, but they are all small. Potosi is the worlds highest city, with a population of 163,000 at a brain melting altitude of 4000m. Alongside it’s epic height, it is well known for its crippling mine system, which reaches throughout Cerro Rico a mountain looming over the city at 4824m.



Potosi was founded by the Spanish in 1545 after they discovered indigenous people mining silver. During subsequent years colossal amounts of silver was mined, during which an estimated 6-8 million indigenous and African people died, directly and indirectly from the abominable conditions inside.



Potosi had the banner of largest city in the America’s during the early part of the 17th century until the heavily mined silver supply began to deteriorate and the city became fast became a poverty stricken ghost town. This remained the case until demand for tin shot up, a resource the Spanish had largely ignored, which helped to restore some of the cities former glory. Mining is still in operation all these years later, although the mines are no longer ran by that state, instead groups of miners work in cooperatives to bring out tin, zinc, lead, antimony and tungsten.



Anyways, now you know the complete history of the city concisely, here is what happened during my visit.



On arrival in the Uyuni specific bus terminal we jumped off the bus and went to grab our backpacks from the compartment underneath. The driver opened up to hatch and we witnessed something deeply unpleasant happened. A backpack rolled out and landed wetly onto a rather fresh dog pile. As each of us realised the backpack wasn’t one of ours we had to laugh, as harsh as it was do so. The guy who it belonged to looked understandably pissed, annoyed with his misfortune and I did the best thing I could by giving him my remaining wet wipes from the Salar trip.



For the journey from the bottom of the city, up into the centre, but for one reason or another we decided to walk. Backpacks on, up a few hundred vertical metres under the sun is not the best way to see a city. Our oxygen starved lungs were roasting by the time we made it and began another further tired stumble, this time in hunt of a hostel.



We bumped into two Irish lads who showed us to their hostel. Unfortunately it was full after a desperate, failed attempt to find anywhere else, we had to settle on the unappealing sounding Hostal Compania de Jesús. On dropping our bags off in the rooms we were disappointed to see the religious overtones had completely failed to inspire the hostel to be of any value.



The triple room containing Liz, Ciaran and I was crowned with an odd picture of Jesus, placed above the beds to presumably watch over, judge and guilt people. The portrait, unlike us, didn’t seem to mind the ridiculously powerful smell of diesel that hung in the room. Maybe he‘d gotten used to it, but we couldn‘t and so we left the next morning. The decision to leave was compounded by the ‘breakfast‘ that consisted of a buttered bread roll and the general unpleasantness of the owner.



Back to the first day; we decided to head out to Cerro Rico, taking a small black fume belching minibus up and up to the entrances of the mines. Here a young girl dressed in pink found us wandering gringos and showed us up to a church overlooking the city and some of the mining facilities. This mirador was epic, though spoiled a little by the presence of a large number of power cables and antennas. On the walk back down we spotted and wandered over to several cave entrances and sink holes before being warned not to get any closer. Cerro Rico has more holes than your average Swiss cheese.



After reaching her home, we gave our young guide a tip and purchased a couple of small stones from her mother for cheap souvenirs. We then headed back to town to begin a truly endless and indecisive walk to find food. I’m simple when it comes to food, I want something inexpensive that is not a salad something very easy to achieve in the basic carbohydrate and meat cuisine of Bolivia. Sarah being vegetarian and Liz’s desire to find something non-fried and dirt cheap unfortunately rendered pleasing everyone impossible and after an hour Sarah went with Mark, leaving three to find something. You would think this was easier, but the dirt cheap factor was still a pain but eventually we settled on some miscellaneous meat with cold chips. Liz gratingly remarked that there was better food elsewhere. I was a little sarcastic in my response after such a long, hungry and pointless walk.



The sole benefit of this walk was the randomly stumbled upon success of locating a decent hostel, La Vizuna, which we checked into the following morning. This place had fantastic beds, complete with actual duvets (something you do not see in any hostel anywhere I have ever been), a decent breakfast, hot showers, social areas and full access to a restaurant kitchen.



This second day was something of a write-off; we all spent a huge amount of time of the internet catching up with news of the world and uploading photos. Despite four dull days in Uyuni, the internet there had been hugely overpriced and terrible, like everything else there. During the day we met Sandra, from Holland, who was staying in our hostel. Everyone liked her and we had dinner together that evening, for me one of the four courses was a tasty llama steak.



Third day Ciaran, Liz and I split from Sarah and Mark to sightsee and to investigate mine tour options. Whilst Ciaran and I were atop a viewpoint a historical viewpoint, which Liz decided against due to its cost (less than a pound), we spotted Sandra at street level and so joined her as she was also checking out tour agencies. I had previously investigated The Real Deal Tours, which is ran by former miners and seemingly only had positive reviews, the same for Koala Tours. The problem with these however, was that the tours cost 100 Bolivianos, just less than ten pound, which Liz decided was far too much. Somehow she found an agency that offered tours to this hugely dangerous place for 50B and as the others were ok with it, I reluctantly agreed to put my name down.



Fourth day we woke early to begin the tour. A French guy who we’d met in the agency the day before when he was drunk, was aboard the minibus, drinking rum, which he continued through the entire day. Our first stop of the tour was at what the tour agency had called a miners market, but was in fact a single shop that was slightly overpriced. Here we were informed about some of the miners traditions and invited to buy gifts for them. Amongst the selection were small bottles of Caiman (96% alcohol), coca leaves and dynamite. We had brought coca leaves in town, anticipating inflated prices, so instead I purchased a stick of dynamite - when am I ever likely to have that opportunity again?



Before reaching the mine, we stopped at a wooden shack and kitted up with our mine gear, minus the promised facial masks, we were however supplied with head torches and told that if we needed to, we could cover our mouths (fantastic). We reached /Cerro Rico once more and walked into the black, our head torches the only light available to illuminate the stagnant walls. We had to begin crouching after only a few metres. The only initial evidence of human presence in the tunnels was the hissing of pipes along the wall, pressured for machinery down below, there was no lighting. After we reached the first widened area, where the tunnels split, we bumped into our first few miners who graciously took some of the gifts from us. All of them were filthy, sweaty and looked exhausted. After a half-assed talk from our sluggish guide in Spanish we headed deeper into the darkness and began to sweat.



We crawled on hands and knees through a wretched tunnel, deep inside the bowels of a mountain at an unfathomable 4500m above sea level, and arose in front of a statue of Satan. The miners give offering to Satan for good reason; there is nothing to indicate the presence of God in this terrible place and the pummelling heat and sub-terrain truly give the impression that hell is within reach.



We stopped in front of this disturbing crudely constructed statue, eyes immediately drawn not to its own, but to its groin. They definitely believe that Satan down there. At the statues feet lay a llama foetus. Be began the miners ritual, each person pouring a small amount of 96% alcohol at its base before taking a tiny sip; the booze burning from the throat all the way to the stomach. An unfiltered cigarette was lit and placed in his mouth before another was passed around to those who wanted it. Finally some coca leaves with dropped to the llama foetus and we also took some in our mouths, chewing the foul leaves into a patty to hold inside a cheek.



Sweat flowed ever increasingly as we headed further down through the complex tunnel system, loosely held together with a few bits of wood here and there. Before we reached the bottom of our tour, stumbling upon a teenage miner laid out across some cart track, we walked through tunnels covered in crystals of cyanide, arsenic, and asbestos. Without the masks we were promised, we breathed in these harsh, toxic chemicals, as if breathing in hot air, underground at 4500m wasn‘t difficult enough! The teenage miner managed to speak a few words to the tour group, he had been in the mine since his was 13 and worked 12 hour shifts every day to help support his family. A lot of Bolivian families are large and with increasing costs in food everyone who can is needed to do what they can. He weakly accepted some coca and water from us before we began our ascension from hell.



We took a slightly different route back out, passing more and more miners, calling down the tunnels for people to get out of the way of their carts. I noticed that the rails weren’t even attached to the floor, they just lay unsecured. This meant that changing a truck between lines was an incredibly difficult task and some of us feebly attempted to help. We crawled through more dusty, dank, dripping tunnels and climbed dangerous rickety ladders that stretched upwards at crooked and deformed angles.



Finally we could see the light at the end of the tunnel and we exited the mine at last. The sudden clash of natural light against corneas forced a necessity to shield tired eyes for a lengthy time as pupils readjusted. Coming out of the mine felt like a rebirth, the cooling afternoon and oxygen a hugely welcoming presence and comforting presence.



During the tour we learnt a good amount about the physical conditions in the mines, but in vocal knowledge, our guide was sadly not useful and comparatively, our tour was vastly limited to others I have spoken to people about. It was interesting, but I wish we had used a different company.



We decided to spent one more day in Potosi, which began with fits of coughing, barely a few hours in the mine had managed to do that to our lungs. A changed of scenery was needed for the day and so we took a minibus a few hours out of town to a naturally heated crater lake. This was a perfect day; we swam in the warmth and dove and jumped off a plinth on the edge of the pool. We chased a trio of ducks across the pool, trying to corner them for comedy value. When we finally got ready to leave I began something of a game with myself to find the most stupid way to feed the ducks, from biscuits on my knees, to my head and finally feeding them wafers held between my teeth. It was one of those days.



In the mid afternoon we wished Sandra all the best on her trip and took our bus onwards to Sucre.

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