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Published: August 9th 2007
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Lighting a ciggie from smoking dynamite
and maybe looking a little more Ghostbusters then Top Gun My next stop on the Bolivian rollercoaster was the city of Potosi, and continuing the elevated theme, is the world's highest city (4,000m). It is South America's mineral heartland, with the city's Cerro Rico mountain being rich in silver ore, lead, tin, zinc, all of which have been at high demand at one time or another. Booms and crashes have fluctuated Potosi's fortunes, and now tourism is seemingly the new gold rush. The standout attraction is a co-operative tour of the working mines. The tour firstly takes you to the miner's market where you buy gifts for the miners. On offer are coca leaves, Sangani (the local 95% proof spirit), and dynamite. Apparently this is the only place in the world you can commercially purchase dynamite. Therefore, everyone does just that and you end up with a tourist bus loaded with 24 sticks of undetonated nitroglycerine. Nitroglycerine itself is fairly stable until mixed, wrapped, and inserted with a priming device. The thing is, I bet the miners are sick to the teeth with gifts of dynamite and probably would rather a Mars bar or packet of Pringles. I, of course, bought dynamite.
The conditions in the mine are stiffling hot, cramped,
dark with asbestos filled tunnels. This is why the miners, like many Bolivians, spend their days chewing coca leaves, as the coca leaf has an anaesthetic property activated by saliva. However, through excessive processing cocaine can be isolated from the coca leaf and so decades of international pressure have been put on Bolivia to cut back on their coca leaf production. A political standoff exists between the farmers, the government and the USA, who habitually fly over Bolivia destroying coca fields.
Cerro Rico mountain has pretty much been hollowed out over the years and the waiver we signed before entering the mine made it evident that a collapse would not be totally unexpected. Being ever the cynic, I did wonder whether us tourists were really being subjected to the true working conditions. I could see absolutely no reason that lights and water could not be piped down the tunnels. Perhaps there is another set of tunnels that we do not visit where the conditions are more humane. Don't get me wrong, I still have no doubts its a God-awful job and I'm not suggesting for one moment they have a canteen and gym down there, but they are otherwise just
staying in the 19th century for the sake of voyeuristic tourism.
We were all given grey overalls, yellow hard hats, and perched next to the mine-trains in our masses looking like the Doozers from Fraggle Rock. I tried to reminisce this with the other backpackers, failing to take into account that none of them had even been born by 1983, let alone were familiar with Gobo, Sprocket, Travelling Mac and Co. In fact, as I bounce from Youth Hostel to Youth Hostel, the youths invariably ask me, "Is 29 not a bit old to be backpacking?". They're right off course. I mean, I'm old enough to be their slightly older brother. I should be at home making babies, exhausting myself to a standstill during the working week trying to squeeze enough together for a tinpot mortgage, and spending my weekends circling IKEA - not gallavanting around the world talking to kids about 80s cult TV.
That evening back in Potosi, the students of the city were demonstrating against the refusal of the University governor to step down. Things got quite heated. Before long we were wandering around in the middle of a fully blown riot. We took shelter in
a pizzeria and watched the action unfold outside the window. It was not until a cannister of tear-gas exploded in the restaurant that we scarpered. If you've never been tear-gassed, believe me, it doesn't just make you a little emotional and weepy. It burns the back of your nose, throat and eyeballs. Luckily this all happened between finishing our pizza and paying the bill, so at least I got a free Mighty Meaty out of it. Once things had seemingly quietened down, we took to the streets again. At this point a hundred bandana-clad students came rushing past in the opposite direction. Sensibly the others in my group fled too, but I thought I'd play the dumb-whiteboy card and walk hands aloft to the ring of the police cordon. "Evenin' officer, and what seems to be the problem here?". The officer was in no mood for a cocky gringo like me, shoved his gun in my face, and without the need for a translater told me to get my pasty white ass off the streets. Che Geuvara and Butch Cassidy both got shot here in Bolivia, so I wasn't going to hang around to complete the trio of modern day
If you look really closely....
...you'll notice it's not a real dinosaur icons to take a bullet in the Bolivias.
All this was happening whilst the Potosi department of Bolivia prepares for the annual Tinku festival, a ritual fighting ceremony between tribes from this region of Bolivia. The festival itself takes place once a year on July 25th (so unfortunately I'll miss it), and thousands of Bolivians take part in this full on hand-to-hand brawl. This is a ritual to pachamama (Mother Earth) - the belief being that they should shed their blood on the earth that feeds them. Think Friday night outside your local Kebab house.
I left the mayhem of Potosi for the calmness of Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia and the colonial centrepiece. The well preserved, whitewashed buildings make it an attractive city to visit, and it's affluent feel make it a comfortable location to stop in. A perfect place to have the least Latino day of the trip. Saturday morning started with an English fry-up, whilst watching the (predictably dull) FA Cup final with a cluster of co-Brits, spending the rest of the day at a European theme park and the evening in a Dutch bar drinking Heinneken's and listening to Europop.
The final
Spelling my name with people
This was easy. Afterwards we had to write JORDAN. Using 5 people escape from Bolivia was through the Salt Flats of Uyuni. I was still travelling with Ben and Jordan, and we hooked up with 3 girls on the bus from Sucre. The 6 of us hired a 4x4 and a guide, Fidel, to take us through the salt flats and across the border to Chile.
The salt plains are hundreds of square miles of flat, pure, blinding whiteness in every direction, which disables your depth perception. Before we set off on the 3 day tour we stocked up with bundles of warm clothes, buckets of booze, and bunches of kids toys (for those mis-perspective shots). We spent the previous night drinking Sangani and designing dozens of clever, arty photos. I'd not been so excited since Take That announced they were reforming. Toys at the ready, we set about shooting those perfect images. We were useless. Either bamboozled by shadows, the camera's auto-focus or usually just our plain rubbishness at connecting the distant and close objects. It was good fun trying though and we did fluke a couple of half-decent shots.
I was told not to underestimate just how cold it was going to be out here, but I predicatably underestimated
just how cold it was going to be and turned up underclothed. If you ever visit the salt plains, please don't underestimate just how cold it is.
After a month of Bolivian madness I was crossing into the relative sanity of Chile.
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