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Published: November 7th 2008
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Beer and Dynamite
A great combination. We have been in a bit of hurry to get south, so we only spent a few days in Potosi, the highest city in the world, famous for its silver mines. (Get the lame title? Mines. Miners. Short time. Minor stop. See it? Miner vs. Minor? Funny? No. It isn´t. I know. Lame attempt. But come on... this is something like my fiftieth blog and titles are simply not easy to think up, so give me a break.) The city itself is very reminiscent of Sucre, except that the streets are narrower, dirtier, and the colonial architecture, while still beautiful, isn´t as overwhelming. However, it is easy to see how this town, at one point in time, was one of the wealthiest in the world. Now, though, it has the feeling of a town that was once greater than it is currently, like most mining towns I´ve been too.
Anyway, we got in off a ridiculous bus ride which took a few hours longer than anticipated. We found our hostel, booked our mine tour, and scoped out as much of the center of the city as we could in the rest of that day. Creasing our way through the market,
Crawling in the mines
It was a bit hard to see in the mines... we ended up stumbling out upon a street full of cookies, pastries, and various other baked goodies. It reminded me of my friend Jon´s screen saver. There were sweets of the most brilliant colors lining the streets. Darren would have been lost for hours. We were laughing at the florescent pink, deep fried cotton candy looking things, taking pictures of cookies baked in the shape of local cholita women, and simply perplexed by the deserts we couldn´t recognize. We pointed at a pile of cookies as large as my arm, gave the woman a dollar and twenty cents, and walked away with enough sugar to keep one of my little cousins up for a week.
The next morning we went for our mine tour and ended up on the same tour as Team Austria, the Austrian couple from our Pampas trip. While I´ve done mine tours before, this was a one of a kind experience. We got dudded up in protective clothing and were brought to the miners market. Here, we gave a little sacrifice and a little taste to some 96% alcohol; which ended up burning my throat for the next few hours. Then, we purchased three a
Streets of Potosi
The mountain behind. nicely packaged combinations of nitroglycerine, sodium carbonate, and a detonator with a two minute wick (i.e. dynamite) (more on that later). Additionally, we bought some coca leaves and soda for the miners. Next we ran through the refinery, where they take the stones and minerals from the mines, and separate them out in the various compounds made of silver, zinc, tin, and iron. It was interesting walking through this area, hearing how they separate out the minerals, and seeing the working conditions.
Next, we headed into the mines. It is a working mine, so there are tubes running everywhere, tracks for the trolleys carrying stone, and workers ripping up the mountain. The tunnels are tiny, most of the time you are kneeling and crawling, rarely are you able to stand upright. We descended from the top level, which was created in colonial times to the second and third levels, where we met several miners. The air is constantly filled with particles and since we left the mines we have all be coughing quite harshly. It got to be exceptionally hot as we were crawling about and when the guide said it was time to leave, I was ready. However,
Weird lil Guy
I liked this statue, even though he is a bit creepy. as we reached the top level I noticed the girl in front or me start to run. The thought "Why is she running?" had just crossed my mind when I heard one of the mineral filled, iron carts rolling down the tracks at me. I took off sprinting as fast as I could, while dodging the cross beams above my head. Finally I reached the guide who was yelling at everyone to run and jump into a small cove, in order to avoid the cart barreling down on us. As I jumped into the cove, everyone asked where Luke was. All I knew was that he was behind me. He literally appeared, diving into the cove, about a second before the cart came streaming past. At this point we have a sense of humor about the ridiculous things Bolivia has done to us, but this was probably the closest any of the three of us have come to getting destroyed.
So, on that note, we had some fun with the dynamite we bought earlier in the day at the market. We had given two sticks to the miners below, but saved one, just to see what would happen when
five gringos and one crazy Bolivian play with nitroglycerin. The guide made a nice little bomb, lit the fuse and said we had 45 seconds for pictures before he had to run and get the bomb set down. We were all a little hesitant holding onto a lit stick of dynamite, but the guide was adamant about us taking photos. (Eric´s edit: Our guide really did develop a crazy look in his eye for the dynamite-exploding portion of this tour. It only got frightening after 45 seconds had easily passed, and he was still shoving the bomb into our hands for more photos everytime we tried to give him the dynamite. Another crazy, but fantastic, Bolivian tour guide.) Finally, about a minute and a half later, he ran down the street with the bomb, set it down in the middle of the field, and as soon as we thought it wasn´t going to blow, it was a beautiful explosion. A fantastic way to end the trip to the mines.
Initially we had planned on leaving that night for Tupiza, expecting to arrive at 3 a.m. but decided instead to spend one more night in Potosi and leave in the
morning. So, we will be arriving in Tupiza, a town of about 20,000 on Halloween. From what I´ve read, there isn´t really a bar in town, and I´m sure no one has heard of this ridiculous holiday, one of my favorites. So please, those of you at home, celebrate a little for me.
But, since this is a short blog, thought I would make a quick mention of my delapidated state (it´s been a while since I´ve made fun of myself on the blog and I know everyone enjoys that). So, my hair is getting to the point of being ridiculously long. It´s not long as in you describe a person as having long hair, but more as in you do a double take and point out the freak walking down the street in front of you to your friends. There was a period where I kind of liked the long hair, it looked passable, but now it is simply getting too damn long. Shortly, I´ll be taken for one of three things: a goth, a hippy, or a guy that never realized 80s hair bands fell out of fashion. Now, I don´t wear black, I have pigmentation to
my skin, and I talk to people, so I won´t be mistaken for a "Day Walker." (That´s a vampire that walks around in the day for those that have never seen a Blade movie...) As an unemployed traveler that rarely has access to something resembling a passable shower (i.e. I occasionally get a bit rank) I am dangerously close to falling into the second category of longhairs. Now, since Eric added a large number of Hawaii residents to the blog e-mail list I´ll tred lightly on hippies. While I did dabble in pacifism once, there are several reasons why I´m no longer in that category; to put it briefly, I´m more Walter than The Dude. My hope is that I somehow fall into the last category of males with exceptionally long hair: people who didn´t make it out of the 1980s. I´m not going to lie, I love 80s music, Journey´s "Don´t Stop Believing" makes my fist involuntarily pump, and I would rock a Appetite for Destruction T-Shirt if I had one. I still have three months left on the trip, so the hair is going to get crazy long, and once it is of the appropriate hilarity, I´ll be
sure to send a decent photo (similar to the mustache photos from Kili).
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Jonathan
non-member comment
Diabetes
Your trip looks delicious.