300 Mines and some tragic working conditions

  Potosi, Bolivia
Monday, April 24, 2006

I arrived in Potosi at 2am last night and found the most appropriate hostel called... get this ´Koala Den´ I mean, seriously, im in the middle of Bolivia and theres an Aussie hostel, run by an Aussie xpat! Too good! At current count we have 5 Aussies, 2 Kiwis and a filthy bunch of thieving scoundrel Israelis. Sure to be a mad party tonight, and at this altitude, a little over 4000 metres, it only takes a sniff to be off it. There is a huge poster of a Koala on one wall and a detailed satellite map of Australia in the lounge room. Unreal! It almost feels like home. The lounge room has a huge tv and dvd player and the shelves are lined with hundreds, and I do mean hundreds of DVD´s!

I spent the last 4 days in the South West of Bolivia in the amazing ´Salar de Uyuni´- the worlds biggest salt plains and surrouding deserts. Amazing stuff. We got up at 4am to drive to the middle of the flats, where all we could see for 360 degrees was salt salt and more salt. The sunrise was the most spectacular thing i have seen, absolutley amazing stuff.

The desert around the salt plains is the driest in the world, right next door to Atacama in northern Chile. This is where NASA they sent the Mars Rovers to search for water, as a test mission for the real thing. They failed miserably!
We saw some unreal toxic salt lakes and hot springs, crowded with flamingos. There were llamas and we even saw a few Condors, which are apparantly pretty rare. Armadillos popped up every now and then and even a few Kiwis.

We saw the Dali desert, where he painted that famous scene of rocks, with the tree and melting clock etc.

Im pretty high right now, with a massive thumping headache that even bags of coca leaves dontfix. Potosi is at 4000 metres, but 2 days ago on the tour, we fought altitude sickness, and saw some pretty kool volcanoes and sulphur geysers at 4970 metres! Possibly the highest i will ever be in my life. It was hard work at that altitude. Getting out of the car was a massive effort and left us with pounding heads and strained lungs.

The Mine Tour
Tourists come to Potosi for one reason - The Mines.
Potosi, a mining city at 4200 metres is home to the worlds largest open cut mine but more imporantly, the hill called Cerro Rico - Rich Hill, which is infested with a network of 300 shaft mines, spanning hundreds of kilometers. I took a tour of these mines, which in a way I regret, but it was one of the most amazing things I have done so far.
The day started with a visit to the Miners Market, a few criss crossed streets that each morning, the miners visit to buy coca leaves, dynamite and new tools etc. Before we entered the mines we had to buy presents of dynamite and fuses, coca leaves, cigarettes and alcohol. After purchasing our dynamaite, one for them, one for me, we headed to the mines. We were warned many times, that this tour would change our lives but we werent at all perpared for the horrific conditions and things we were about to see. We entered one of the 300 working mines, which had over 200 miners working in it. We donned our protective clothing and helmets, lamps, boots etc and headed in.
Our tour guide was this lunatic, with nitro glycerine in his mouth!


Firstly, we should not have been there, a fully operational mine, but not just that, a Bolivian mine, that falls well below any standard working conditoin that you would expect, even for bolivia.

The workers stay in the mine for as long as they choose, most work 12 hour days, 7 days a week and live to about 50, dying of lung issues and poisioning as they work with dynamite, cyanide and other toxic chemicals. The mine is actually a volcano and full of the horrible stench of sulphur.

So, we crawled through narrow shafts, dodging from incomming trolleys, full of silver, lead and tin and zinc. This is amazing, we were 3 levels deep and a few kms inside the mountian when we found a worker, just about to light some dynamite. He showed us the 11 sticks that were planted and waiting for a spark. Once the fuse was lit, we had 3 minutes to get the hell out of there. We watched in awe as he fliked a lighter, and the fuses began to shrink and glow red with a loud hissing. He wasnt mucking around and told us to run. We had less than 3 minutes to get a long way from the blast zone. we ran along the trolley tracks then had to get on our bellys and snake through a narrow tunnel before we found a safe spot. We all suffered a minld panick attack, from lack of oxygen, sulphur fumes and exhaustion. Then the explosions started. 11 huge explosions, blasting our ear drums and sending a shockwave through the narrow shafts.It took less than 5 seconds before the entire 11 had been detonated and after 30 minutes, we were allowed back into the tunnel to inspect the damage. It was incradible, the 11 sticks of nitro glyverine had blasted a giant dust filled crater in the new section of the tunnel, big enough for 20 odd people to stand.

We continued through the narrow shafts and after 3 hours, we couldnt wait to get out. We were all exhausted and the sight of sunlight and the breath and coolness of fresh air was exhilliarating.

Now it was time for our own dynamite. This is increadible. Its waaaay way too easy to use. and goes like this. To use this form of nitro glyverine you need 3 things.
1 - The stick of dynamite (nitro glycering)
2 - Your fuse, in our case, 80 cms long which gives about 3 minutes to get the hell away
3 - the most important part - the ignition. An aliminum tube, attached to the end of the fuse, which creates intense heat and gives the charge to active the nitro glycering.

So you get your 3 parts and it goes like this.
Unwrap your stick of nitro glycerine and roll it into a ball, its just like clay. Once you have a well formed ball of nitro glycerine, you get your fuse, with the detonator attached and push the detonator to the centre of your nitro glycering ball. Thats it. Now you add fire, and fucking run like hell!

The 8 of us from our tour each had a dynamite set. We Fused them together for one hell of an explosion. The guide walked about 400 metres away lit the fuse and ran like hell back to where we were standing. then said.. gogogog move back. we ran another 50 metres and waited... then BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. A massive shockwave of air and dust blasted through us, almost knocking us over and shattering our ear drums. The blast was awesome and left us with hours of discussion afterwards of just how easy it is.

The day was over and we had loads to think about.

Ive been pretty high on coca leaves for the last week. They relieve hunger, pain and fatigue but fark me they give you some fucked up dreams, your head goes mental.

Tomorrow im heading north with an awesome group of people from the hostel and one special irish lass to a place called Sucre.