Hola todos! As I write this today I am chilling in Beautiful Sucre, however before I got there I spent a day in Potosí, the famous or rather infamous oxygen deprived mining boom town which at one point had been one of the largest cities in the world rivalling London or Paris in the 17th century, all because of the Cerro Rico – the rich mountain provided silver in abundance, in fact during its peak production it provided over half of the entire Spanish Empire’s new world silver. It is believed to have had 60000 tonnes of silver when they first started mining it back in 1545 when the town was founded.
Now on to the mine itself, after I arrived here I opted to do the usual thing of get on a walking tour round the city, I booked a morning one but the guide asked to move it to the afternoon but she suggested I do the mines tour in the morning and thats exactly what I did. I went to a company called Koala Tours and asked to join the 0845 tour, and for 200 Bolivianos (£22) I was able to sign my soul away and get on up there.
Soon everyone else shows up and we’re put on a bus up towards the mines, first they drop you off at a warehouse where they don you up in all the gear; hard hat w a light, jacket, waterproof trousers and wellies, next it’s a stop to the miners market shop where you can buy yourself a face mask and a gift for the miners, the gifts can be a number of different items such as coca leaves, cigarettes, alcohol or even dynamite, yes you can buy dyamite legally over the counter here no questions asked!
I make my contribution buying them some booze and coca, everyone else buys something and the guide puts it all in the bag and we are soon on way to the mine itself.
After a bumpy ride another 200 meters up this mountain we are there, the guide gives us a brief rundown of the place and tells us it is still very much a working mine with it still holding vast amounts of silver though they are also mining tin here. Interestingly the silver does not get refined here anymore so opportunity to buy an ounce here. Most of the silver gets taken over to Chile to be refined then exported abroad since it isn’t just an investment asset, you need silver for so much of our modern electronics we take for granted back in the west.
Actually getting down into the mines is quite the experience to say the least, to put it bluntly conditions are pretty brutal down here, firstly the combination of dust and the altitude really does a number on your breathing for starters, then you have the passages, in many parts of this mine your crouching down nearly to a crawl where you often bang your head because your so low it’s hard to see whats in front of you.
Now it is also still a working mine so miners come back and four with metal wagons and when they do you have to get out of their way quick. It is backbreaking work, an unladen wagon weighs 250 kg with a fully loaded wagon being over a tonne when full of rocks with silver. They move these wagons up and down the same track and if a full wagon needs to be taken past an empty wagon they pull the empty wagon off the track for the full wagon to pass and then lift the 250 kg wagon back on the track. Also these wagons sometimes come off the track and when that happens they need to lift a wagon weighing a tonne back onto the line by themselves.
Walkikg through you see shrines where sacrifices are made to Pachamama, the earth mother inside this mine, to bring good luck to the miners, they donate things to these shrine’s such as cigarettes. Beer and coca leaves for good luck. They most certainly need it – as you can imagine accidents are common down here! Another part of the shrines is you see represtations of both the indigenous and imported African slave labour that was brought here to mine silver – The Spanish weren’t down here digging themselves! Our guide reckons about 8 million people died in these mines over the 500 years they have been operating which is downright insane if you think about it even if it may be exaggerated numbers wise it feels heavy down here.
Going deeper into the mine you eventually have to work your way down a narrow passage to get to the lower mines and it’s even more claustrophobic down there, to the point where it was just too hard to get the phone out to take pictures as you had to keep moving fast without much room to stand up, eventually though we are lead to one of the exits and we finish the tour. About 2 hours we were down there. These miners work 6-8 hours a shift WITHOUT breaks, so you can imagine how hard it is. We were all feeling it after a 2 hour walk through there! Honestly the place makes Big Pit look like a yoga retreat!
After we are back on the bus and dropped back into town I go meet up with that guide for the walking tour in the afternoon, she shows me round various parts of the city but I ended up finishing it about halfway as I was knackered from all the crouching and being really short of breath up in the mines.
I spent the rest of the day chilling back at the hostel then went out for grub and a few beers, it was busy in town as footy was on and turned out it was Bolivias world cup qualifier and they beaten Suriname 2-1 so this means they have one more playoff to do before they qualify. The mood in town was good after this. Not much else to say here.
Catch you on the next one in Sucre!
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