Meat, Malbec, and Mountains: Apr 24 Potosi

I had a rough start this morning. My taxi arrived at 6:00 a.m., 30 minutes early, so I had to live without a shower or breakfast. I arrived in Potosi after 2.5 hours and the travel agency was closed. Fortunately, another was open that phoned the first one for me. As it turns out, my tour wasnt until 10:00, so I could have slept a little later. Nonetheless, it was good to get breakfast and regroup. The plan is to tour the mines and catch the evening bus to Tupiza to take a tour of the Salar for 4 days beginning tomorrow. Im fast tracking because of the wedding and will sleep all of this off when I get state side.

Potosi is acity of about 150,000 people.It is the world´s highest city at 4070m or 13,350 ft and is a Unesco World Heritage site. The backdrop is Cerro rico, a rainbow colored mountain that houses the mine. Rich silver ore deposits were found in the early 1500´s and the once rich city was formed in 1515.

I didn´t really give the tour of the mines any fore thought; I simply booked a tour. I knew that they could be slightly dangerous and even heard one statistic that over 8 million people have died in these mines; which is more deaths than the holocaust. I was accompanied on the tour by an Argentine family and their two kids appeared my age. The tour started with a trip to a miner´s market to pick up the typical supplies. These include ojas de coca (coca leaves) which are chewed continuously to provide nergy and alleviate the need for food during the 8 hour work day, leijia to activate the coca leaves, pure alcohol to toast to life before entering the mine, and low nicotine, hand-rolled cigarettes.

miner´s necessities: coca leaves and hand-rolled cigarettes

Pure alcohol used to toast to life before beginning the work day at the mine

Our next stop was to get mining clothes (it´s really dirty, wet, and slimey), lantern, helmet and boots. I entered the mine at 4,200m and immediately felt my claustrophobia kick in. I don´t know why I didn´t see this coming. It was positively the hardest thing I have done in South America. Mentally I felt trapped and nausea. Everything was in Spanish. I fought hard to stay present and not panic. I concentrated on translating the guide´s info.

The tour started with a trip to the Casa de Tio. Outside the miners are Catholic; inside they worship the devil we were told. Or at least that was my translation. Tio is a sort of god that miners make an offering to every day. The offering consists of coca leaves, a shot of alcohol, and of course, a lit cigarette. Tio´s nose is burnt from smoking too much.

Posing with Tio

We continued on through out the narrow, dark passages of the mine to the museum. Our guide explained that miners now make a decent wage. A mother will say to her duaghter, ´marry a miner; they have dinero and die primero.´ I was thankful that the Argentine mother also didn´t feel comfortable in the mine and we exited early.

I spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the colonial buildings of Potosi, eating lunch, and trying to update my blog. I caught the 7:00 pm bus and was the only gringa. There were lots of families with young children. It was one of those buses that stopped everywhere and picked people up way beyond capacity so people were sitting in the aisle. They played a horror movie, which didn´t seem appropriate for the kids. Hmmm. The road was dusty, windy, and bumpy. We stopped in a middle of nowhere town for a pee break impeccably timed with every other bus. It seems to be a Bolivian thing, but people were peeing everywhere in the filthy streets. I arrived at 3:00 a.m. in Tupiza wihout incident and took a cab to my hostel who were expecting me.