Explosive Potosi to scary Tupiza - Bolivia

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Trip Start Aug 07, 2008 Previous
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  Tupiza, Bolivia
Wednesday, November 5, 2008

TW - Hi everyone, another update already, I bet you can't believe it!??. First off we had to get to Potosi from La Paz, which is a nine hour truck ride south, but as it turned out the most exciting part of the journey was the first half an hour! Nothing life threatening, but it amused us. It started with us ready to go, but waiting around for Tom's laundry to be returned, next thing we know, an over enthusiastic Policeman is clamping the truck and it seems he only did it because he could, which really annoyed our fiery South African driver, who worked on swearing loudly at the policeman, in English, as the best way to get the clamp off. You may be surprised to hear it didn't work. Our hotel staff did manage to persuade the Policeman to remove the clamp, but on the understanding we left straight away. But what about the laundry I hear you cry, well the plan was to do a circuit and pick Tom up with Laundry in 5..So, we all jumped on board, but our very wound up driver pulled away before we could shut the doors, so as we hurtled down the street, Adam decided we should become a makeshift local bus and started shouting out random names of towns really fast, just like a local

A-Outside the mine having survived explosion

. Next thing, we hit traffic, not M25 rush hour traffic, La Paz all day every day traffic and we're going no where fast. You may be surprised to hear that our driver is getting more and more wound up in the front and all of a sudden we are shown how to drive a truck trough gridlock in La Paz. There were some tight squeezes and some unhappy locals, but we fought through and eventually got round the block, to pick Tom up. It was at this point that we found out Tom's laundry had in fact been returned the night before and put in the wrong room, at which point Steve (Tom's room mate) declared to everyone, reception had told him the laundry was back the night before and he'd forgotten. We didn't tell the driver!!!

So, after all that initial excitement we spent the next nine hours on our truck hurtling towards the mining town of Potosi, the highest city in the world at 4070m. It is now as much of a tourist town as it is a mining town, but in it's day it was the richest city in the world due to all the silver they found there (it's why Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid came to Bolivia), we did not think too much of Potosi, but two things really stood out for us. One was the best steak to date in south America, it was only £5.00 each for a meal that would have cost £40.00 back home, yummy!! The other, was probably the craziest, or dumbest, tour we've done to date (yes, even dummer than cycling down death road!!), the Potosi mine tour

B-Uyuni in the middle of nowhere

.

SD - Only 4 of the group opted to do the mine tour and I was nervous of what to expect. We were picked up the following morning and headed for the miners market first to pick up some gifts for the miners and some dynamite, yes you can just purchase it from little shacks at the side of the road here. We purchased fizzy drinks and biscuits to give to the miners, as well as coco leaves, which we have mentioned before, as a lot of the miners chew coco leaves to help them work longer, which can be as long as 24 hours. In addition, we brought some alcohol that was 96% proof, which apparently they sip only on a Friday! Steve was our guinea pig to try the alcohol and coco leaves, his face said it all., not very nice. Finally, we brought everything you need for an explosion, dynamite, fuse etc!

From the market we headed up to the mine, donned attractive overalls and Bob The Builder style hats and entered the mine with our tiny torches shining. First we were taken to see the shrine to pacha mamma as well as a devil statue. Back when the mines were worked by slaves, their captors told them that they would go to hell if they did not work for them and have a good production rate, they therefore give offerings to the devil for good production. We met some of the miners who were hammering holes to put the explosives in, one metre deep into solid rock, the mallets they used were extremely heavy and to just do one hole looked like a hard slog taking all morning!

C-Harvested salt piles

. These first miners were in their teens and usually boys start as young as 12 years old in the mines. The mine is run as a co-op, each family that works in the mines has its own area to work in, which has been passed on through the generations, as all the silver is pretty much gone they now extract a mixture of zinc/aluminium ore. Life expectancy for miners is low and gets worst the lower they work in the mines due to the poor air quality and its more dangerous. Our tour guide asked if we wanted to go down a hole, a young boy demonstrated to us how we'd get down using a bit of rope, none of us were keen as it didn't look particularly safe and we started to get the feeling it was a little unregulated for a tour.

Before we had entered the mine, we were asked if we wanted to see an explosion inside the mine, the boys were all keen and very excited as you can imagine only boys can be about blowing things up. After we had left the teenage miners leaving them with some gifts, it all got a bit crazy! They were going to do the demonstration explosion, but our guide wasn't telling us what was going on and kept on disappearing and we all wanted to be as far away as possible. Then a guy lit the fuse to the dynamite in front of us and offered for us to hold it, which we all said no to, trying to usher him away to go and plant the dynamite. All of us by this point were thinking it was a crazy tour and a bit unsafe

D-Coral Island

. We were then told to hover in a tunnel, huddled together with our fingers in our ears and eyes closed, expressing our concerns to one another is the polite way of describing what we were saying and then the explosion came. It was the biggest boom with a flash of light and I was glad I had asked if we should cover our ears! We then relaxed, releasing our nerves through a lot of laughter and then thought it was the coolest thing!

We continued to look around the mine, having to watch our heads from the low ceilings and footings from the holes, shouting back instructions to the rest of the group about the dangers coming up. Your footings were the most important, as your hard hat took most of the impact when you missed a low ceiling, but you couldn't afford to miss your footings with what appeared to be bottomless holes all around you. Apparently a Japanese tourist a few years prior had not listened to instruction and was taking pictures whilst moving around the mine and fell to his death! A one point we had to scale a wall using just a bit of rope. As we past more miners we gave them the gifts we had brought and got to see the small holes they worked in, some of which were up above us and they had to scale up the walls to get access. We met one man who had worked in the mines for years and was a carrier, he would carry the large bags of ore out to the entrance for one of the miners, it was back breaking work we could hardly lift the bags

E-Giant Cacti Toby as perspective

. All aspects of mining work was grim and they do it all for as little as £4 per day.
So we made it out the mine before 12pm which was when they started the explosions (I was checking my watch since the guide seemed a little cuckoo!) and then our guide planted another explosion outside the mine so we could watch the effect. I was going to get a picture of this explosion but chickened out at the last minute, preferring to cover my ears!

The mine tour seemed really unregulated, but was a funny experience looking back, particularly when we managed to get out in one piece, but wasn't what I had expected, I think I was expecting it to look like the mines from Indiana Jones.

We then left Potosi, headed south to Uyuni to see its famous salt flats. Uyuni is a town in the middle of nowhere and other than access to the salt flats doesn't have much else to offer. The first night we headed to a local bar and started to plan what type of photos we would take on the salt flats and what props we would take. As the flats have no horizon its possible to take some unusual shots, you'll have to look at the photos to see what I mean. The bar had two drinking games on offer, one with water and the other with alcohol, if you were quick your name went on the wall. Some of our group tried the water challenge and ended up in the toilet, strangely trying to drink a lot of water as quickly as you can is more difficult than alcohol and will make most people sick!

The next day we headed to the market to buy some props and were chuffed to find a dinosaur toy, as it was exactly what we wanted for our photos

F-View from Coral Island

. We boarded 4 by 4s and headed for the flats. The salt residue came from millions of years ago, when it was originally a sea, the land moved, trapping the water, causing it to become a salt water lake and then the water evaporated. The salt is not about to run out either, although we can not remember the size/depth of the flats, its bloody big (Toby's description), as we travelled across it for hours! We visited a small salt factory where the salt is grinded and packaged up for sale in Bolivia, some is exported but goes through more refining for exporting than it does for local use.

Our main stop of the day was at coral island, called this since its made of coral, we took the walk to the top, for a great view of the flats. The island is full of tall old cactus, I say old as they grow at a very slow rate. We ate lunch here and then had several hours, which we needed, to take the shots on the flats. Taking the pictures was quite difficult, as everything had to be lined up, but, we managed to get a few decent shots, although they could probably do with photo shopping slightly.

Leaving coral island, we went on to the salt hotel, where everything is made from salt for beer and chocolate whilst waiting for the sun to set. Following sunset we left for the journey back to the hotel for a pizza dinner

G-Us on the summit of Coral Island

. We were staying at a decent hotel and it had a restaurant serving pizza and cake American style since one of the owners was American.

Having been ill for a few weeks, I finally asked to see a doctor and he was at the hotel within 5 minutes that evening, however he spoke no English. So, one of our guides did her best to explain to the doctor my little problem, referring to her dictionary a lot and learning all sorts of words she didn't think she'd need to know in Spanish! The doctor gave me a prescription and the visit cost me £5, bargain! So no pizza/cake for me that night, as the doctor ruled out all the naughty foods I like to eat, it was fresh tomato soup for me and the owner even left the cream out since she knew the doctors orders.

Next day, we were once again back on our beige rattley truck heading for Tupiza. The roads in Bolivia are pretty poor and you don't see much tarmac. Our truck started to literally fall apart within a hour of this journey, the bumps in the road had caused the rivets from one of the windows to rattle their way loose, so we stopped whilst our driver clamped the window together until he had time to fix it at lunch.

This journey took us through Butch Cassidy & The Sundance territory and there were various points where either the movie had been filmed or the real characters had roamed

H-Drew saving Suzanna from Dinosaur

. We drove down a dry river bed and stopped for lunch surrounded by llamas/alpacas. Back on the road again and we ended up in a town where we realised we were lost and had to ask the locals which way it was to Tupiza. We just about made it under the power lines in the town and caused a bit of a scene, with most of the town coming out to have a look and a laugh. After we got out of the town, we headed back the way we came and laughed about the town we turned around in, as it was in the middle of nowhere and wasn't a through road, so we thought they would be talking about how the aliens came to town in a beige truck for years to come!

After this we discovered our driver had not taken this route before, there were also no road signs and we were still lost. We tackled a skinny road which the truck just about fitted on and the group was starting to get a bit concerned. We had still not reached Tupiza and it was starting to get dark when we reached the top of a canyon and started to descend. The road was slim and our truck again just fitted, our driver took every corner very slowly and if you looked out the window it didn't appear that there was an road beneath us and ahead you could see the quality of the road was poor with large holes. Whilst passing over one corner with a big chunk of the road missing poor Karly was thrown out of her seat The whole group was quite and frightened, with a few tears, especially since we had got to the top of the canyon in day light and therefore knew how far the drop was, eventually I did have to burry my head into Toby and stopped looking

I -Toby about to be eaten by the dinosaur

. It took quite a while to get down into the canyon and even then there was no town in site, but it was just hidden and we made it there shortly after. To help you understand how bad this journey was, our driver said it was the worst piece of road he'd ever driven on in 8 years of driving in South America and that he would be going to church from now on. In addition, when locals found out what road we'd come down they were amazed as its only used by much smaller mining trucks,not by the general public, this was definitely the real death road!

So, having arrived safe, if not entirely sound, the group went out together for a relaxing dinner, which was ok. The group then started to disperse at varying times depending on stress levels, I think. When we set off for our hotel, we left the restaurant and immediately felt uneasy about some of the people around us. We walked down the street to our hotel and we both felt as though people where following us. As we got closer to our street, the crowds thinned and the number of street lights reduced. We were still being followed by three teenagers!!! Our thoughts at this point were full of suspicion and of oh no, we survived the journey, but are about to get mugged. Then, the teenagers started to whistle (this is often a signal to others in a gang) and before us, 5 more guys drifted out of the shadows into the road in front of us. I'd like to say at this point that Toby, manfully took them all on, saving me, my honour and our money, but.........he didn't. We weighed up our options and doubled back on ourselves walking directly at the three who'd followed us and towards the crowds. The teenagers then changed from walking with purpose behind us and stopped looking like they now didn't know what to do with us walking at them and perhaps realising we were on to them. So we turned down another street with a hotel on it and made our way back to our hotel a different way

J-Under the thumb

. We very much felt as though we'd got ourselves out of being mugged and felt very lucky on surviving what has become known as "near death day AAAAAGGGHHHHHH!!!!!)

The next day, we did nothing. Relaxed, looked around the town and de-stressed from all the excitement of the previous day, ending it with a film, yup Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which is still brill and I can highly recommend a watch, or re-watch if you haven't seen it for a while. So that's it for this instalment. Our final instalment from South America will be coming soon. We're be heading into Argentina and then finishing in Chile, so keep an eye out for it.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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K-Rum anyone?	L-Salt hotel	M-Sunset on the flats	N-Great view before we were lost

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