Down the mine
Trip Start
Oct 17, 2006
1
18
40
Trip End
Mar 04, 2007
After another long drive day we arrived in Potosi, the highest town of its size (100,000 people) in the world at 4200m and also one of he biggest dumps I've ever been to!! The main (possibly only) reason that it is a tourist town is because of the silver mines which have been central to the rise and fall of Bolivia. I went on a mine tour stopping first at the refinery, where they clearly have no concept of health and safety as a guy was putting rocks into a big spinning machine with lots of sharp edges! We went on to the miners market whee we bought dynamite and coca leaves as presents. We drove up to the mine and got kitted out in lovely yellow boiler suits and headed down into the mine. It was more spacious than I had imagined to start with but later on we did have to scramble on our hands and knees for a bit in the searing heat with dust blowing straight in our faces - not a pleasant experience but interesting all the same. We also got to blow up some dynamite which was quite fun!
