Our next stop was Potosi, a six hour bus ride away. We had been told to brace ourselves for Bolivian buses. They were meant to be a step back towards Guatemalan chicken buses, with no toilets nor stops and luggage on the roof and bumpy, bumpy dirt roads
The bus we got was not actually too bad. It was clearly a Chilean cast off, still showing the Chilean bus company name instead of the Bolivian name, which made finding our bus tricky.
Other than that it was a perfectly comfortable trip and the only 'oh dear' moment was when the bus driver got the bus wedged at 45 degrees, on account of some road works and a very lumpy road. We all had to get off, but the driver righted it quickly and we were on our way again. We passed through some pretty primitive towns on our way, one with the cutest baby donkey.
Potosi is the highest city in the world at 4060 metres. The town is built up the hillside towards Cerro Rico (or rich mountain) which contains the largest silver and zinc mines in Bolivia and possibly the world. It was the silver from Potosi that financed the Spanish empire and, hard to believe, in 1600 it was a bigger city than London or Paris with 160,000 inhabitants, despite the altitude.
It is a pretty city with attractive plazas and buildings and colourful houses all sitting in the shadow of Cerro Rico.
Most people who come to Potosi do a tour of the mine and we did too. First they dressed us up in mining garb: rubber boots, orange over-pants, green rubberised Chinese-style jacket, helmets and lamps.
Then we went to the miner's market to learn about the tools they use and to buy gifts for the miners. Instead of a completo being a fancy hot dog, like it is in Chile, here it is a stick of dynamite, a fuse and a bag of ammonium nitrate to make the bang bigger. It only cost slightly more than a Chilean hot dog. As well as the completos, the miners like soft drinks, coca leaves and 96% proof alcohol. They drink it on Fridays to worship the devil of the mines, who they call tio, or uncle, to ask for good luck and no accidents.
Before we went up to the mine, we stopped at one of the many refining plants. Here they take the raw mined material, crush it and using the flocculation technique and drops of chemicals, they concentrate the minerals (mainly zinc and silver, with some tin and lead). We got smeared with some silver concentrate across our fingers. It looked like sparkly sand as it dried. Sadly, the mineral concentrate is then all shipped overseas for smelting, as no one has the money to build a smelter in Bolivia, nor do they have the water supply for it, at least not near Potosi. All their hard work ultimately leads to bigger profits offshore - the typical story for all developing countries, I guess.
Since the 1950s the mines are worked in a cooperative fashion, with leaders of groups leasing the mine space from the government. The estimate is that 15,000 miners still work in the hill, working in groups ranging from 5 to 60 men. There are over 400 mines but only 150 or so are still open.
We went in the main entrance (into hell, as it is called) following some rudimentary trolley tracks. After about 250 metres any sign of fresh air was gone and the air was dusty with an unfamiliar smell. We all wore bandannas to try and not breath in the harmful dust but sometimes it was too hard to breathe without slipping it off for a second, especially when we started climbing and crawling.
We stopped briefly at what is called the miners museum, which had a statue of tio the miners devil (who was very hairy, unlike the local people, who have practically no body hair - an Australian girl had more hair on her arm than our local guide). Worshiping him seemed similar to worshiping Maximon in Guatemala.
They had various stats on display in the cave museum. One showed the number one cause of illness in the miners was silicosis, lung disease from breathing in the dust. A survey had found that about 85% of the miners worked there because there was no other work for them, about 5% liked it (these tended to be young men who like the danger and excitement) and about 5% worked in the mines out of tradition, following in their father's, and grandfather's footsteps.The rest were working at the time of the survey. Another chart raised the question that had entered my mind: was the rich deposits in Cerro Rico a blessing or a curse for the Bolivian people? The silver deposits had made the Spanish rich, but not the Bolivians, who felt compelled to keep working in the mines, partly as there was no other work, but the money could be good, by Bolivian standards, when the price of silver and zinc was up.
Our first stop after the museum was up to where the biggest group in the mine uses an electric winch to lift the collected rock up to the first level in a rubber basket where it can be trollied out. Other groups are not so lucky, having to move the rock with man power alone.
After that we scrambled and crawled down two more levels to where they were filling the rubber buckets and each had a turn. It was really hot down there and really hard to breathe. None of the miners were wearing gas masks, for that reason, despite all knowing the huge health risk they are putting themselves at. Instead, they all had cheeks full of coca leaves.
Our guide had worked in the mine from when he was 10 to 15 and had some lung damage (he didn't want to know how much); his grandfather had 80% lung damage from working in the mine and not long to live. 'A visit to the mines will make you all love your jobs all the more,' he said, and I'm sure it is true.
There were five more levels in the mine, but we were happy to go up again. Emerging into the light and fresh air was a relief.
We hadn't seen any explosions in the mine, but got the chance then to set off completos in an empty area. I've never been one for seeing the fun in blowing things up but others in the group were in heaven.
Luckily for us, we could then leave the mine and get on with our travels, but no doubt we will never see pure metals in the same way, having gained some idea of what goes into producing them.
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