Mine tour!
Trip Start
Feb 23, 2008
1
17
43
Trip End
Jul 04, 2008
Potosi,
Potosi,
Bolivia
Saturday, April 12, 2008
So the next day Chris, a Swiss couple (a very tall girl and a small ninja-like guy), and I geared up and went to go buy our gifts for the miners. The gifts include a very strong corn alcohol, cigarettes, coca leaves, dynamite, and water. The mines are all in Cerro Rico mountain. It used to be full of silver, but the Spanish took it all long ago. So now they mine for any metal of value and hope to find silver. There are so many mines in the mountain, the government had to start regulating the mine routes so the mountain doesn't collapse.
We started the tour with a 1/4 mile jog through the 4 foot opening of the cave, sloshing around in 6" inches of water and trying to move as fast as possible in the dark without tripping in one of the many holes
me in all the mining gear
. We saw many miners working and since our guide was a former miner we hung out with some of them. We would sit and pass around the corn alcohol (pour a little for Tio and pour a little in your mouth). The miners praise Tio and always have to give gifts to this huge, ugly, red statue of a devil with a huge penis. Apparently it is Tio that keeps the miners safe and prosperous.There was one part that the girls didn't do- it involved crossing a log suspended 15 feet in the air. After crossing the log, but while still standing on it, you had to grab a rope and use the rope to climb 30 feet in the air to another level. The guide and the ninja made it across fine. Chris made it with some struggle and forbade me from going. I still decided to try but my legs started shaking so badly after just one step on the log I decided against it. Same thing happened with the Swiss girl. At least I had company. I really enjoyed the 3 hour tour through the tunnels, except after
about 2 1/2 hours I was ready to leave the mine. It definitely became
hot and hard to breathe.
Oh and they blew up the dynamite we gave the miners. Except we had to stand so far away it was barely even a blast!
We tried to leave the next day, but I was suddenly too sick to move. We had to eat the cost of the tickets. Chris went back to the bus station to get new tickets for the next day and we had our first scam in Bolivia. When we arrived to the bus station to leave, the bus we bought tickets for didn't exist. They put us on a much crappier bus that smelled terrible and was overcrowded. It wasn't a lot of money it was only bad because it was an overnight bus!
