Dynamite, 96% alcohol, silver mines
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2008
1
13
23
Trip End
Sep 22, 2008
Potosi,
Bolivia
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Full of resource with mines full of zinc, silver and lead, Potosi was once one of the richest places in the world - though now one of the poorest
potosi
. In the morning we got to visit one of the mines, our guide reckons its only a matter of time before someone stops tourists from visiting as it is quite dangerous and unsafe. Our guide, Soledad, was a friendly woman. She told us 15000 people come to work at the mines everyday, every man works for himself not a company and the age range is from 10 to about 40. Most people die from some kind of respiratory things from breathing a load of shit in the mines, and safety standards were supposedly on the rise. There didn't seem to be any sort of standards int he mines, just every man for himself making it a place of work with poor conditions and full of danger. The tour started at the miner's market where we sampled some of the stuff and bought gifts for the miners we visited. We tried coca leaves and "activated" the stuff in it with some quinua ash and sweet potato thing.. FOr the miners we each got them coca leaves and a bottle of fizzy drink. The markets stocked all the equipment miners need from headtorch to shovels to dynamite, which was 60p. We bought a stick of dynamite as a group, with detonator and the stringy bit included. We were given overalls, wellies, helmet and headtorch and dressed up before heading up to the mines. First, we went to the top where there was a good view of potosi and a big church thing, and where we could set off the dynamite. The stringy bit was quite long.
potosi
. she said one handspan counts for one minute, so we had a good 7 minutes worth after lighting it. Matt got the stick of dynamite (it was green) and rolled it into a ball which Sol stuck the detonator in and lit the stringy bit. We all had a chance to hold the sparked dyanmite - it was quite surreal and didn't click in my mind that I was holding an ignited powerful ticking bomb. She soon took it down a level so it was far away from us but still in view, and she ran back and hid behind the bus. I caught it all on video, and although it was a good 100m away and down a level, the explosion was quite loud and we felt the air hit us (in the video, you hear me saying profanities just after it exploded!) So that was pretty cool, but we didn't manage to see any miners using dynamite in the mines.There were lots of entrances to the mines, our one was 'San Juan' and it was like a small tunnel, having to duck our heads down and keep our headtorches on. Lines of wires full of compressed air went through the tunnels, for the drilling equipment that the miners used. When we saw a miner, they seemed to just be breaking off rock from the mines and breaking it further into smaller pieces. Those would then be taken to factories where the minerals were separated and purified in a chemical process. It looked like the rocks had glitter on them in there, glitter made from cool materials of course. We saw a few other miners at work, avoiding big huge holes/drops on the way, and having to climb down some drops, a bit like caving. We got to see some shrines to Pachamama (mother earth) and the devil which had a big penis. We offered a sacrifice to Pachamama in the usual way with 96% alcohol, dropping some on the floor and having a sip (tasted disgusting!). We left potosi right after visiting the mines for uyuni...
