The job from hell...

After recuperating in our fancy $35 US hotel room that we spoiled ourselves with, I felt ready to do a tour of the mines at Potosi.

No one is certain how much silver the Spanish colonists took from the mountain next to Potosi, but it is claimed that the Spanish could have built a bridge from Potosi all the way to Spain, completely made from silver, and still had silver left to carry across it! The population reached 200,000, making it one of the largest cities in the Americas in its day. The mining was done by indigenous slaves, most of whom died either in accidents or due to silicosis pneumonia. Eventually, the Spaniards had to bring in African slaves by the millions to augment the labour force. It has also been said that with the bones of the slaves that died in the mines, you could build another bridge all the way to Spain (one estimate claims that 8 million lives were sacrificed).

The silver is now almost entirely gone, but there are traces of tin and zinc that can still be found, in tiny amounts. The locals have set up cooperatives, whereby they continue to work the mine for the few minerals they can find and the small amount of money it provides. Veronica and I were kitted out in miner´s pants, jackets, helmets, lamps and boots, and headed in to see what the working conditions are like. With scarfs over our faces, it was so hard to breath but you didn´t dare pull the scarf down because the amount of dust was horrible, nevermind knowing what it can do to you. Silica dust, arsenic gas, cyanide and asbestos were just a few of the substances that our guide, a former miner, mentioned. The tour agencies warn that anyone with asthma or even any doubts about their medical condition should not go, and the waiver you have to sign is pretty extensive (including risk of mine cave-in etc.). We dropped down through 4 levels of the mine, and the heat just got worse. Most places required you to hunch over as you walked, while several places required you to crawl on your hands, noting the colours of what you were placing your hands on after the guide explained: yellow is sulfur, green is copper, white is arsenic... There seemed to be a white coating everywhere....

The typical worker dies within about 10-15 years of entering the mines, due to silicosis pneumonia. In addition to that, Ronaldo (our guide) explained that 45 people were killed in mine cave-ins during last year alone. As if that weren't dangerous enough, the workers are all continually chewing huge wads of Coca leaves. They insist this is not a drug, but also boast that when chewing coca, they have more energy and don't need to eat, drink water or go to the washroom. Further, they drink 96-proof alcohol in large amounts. They believe that the more pure the alcohol, the more pure the minerals they will find. Hmmm.... Coca, wickedly strong alcohol,.... oh yeah, and they buy dynamite for $3 and use it to open up new faces of the rock underground....

After about an hour underground, gasping for air due to trying to breathe through a scarf, the intense heat, and the elevation (4200m, even at the deepest points), Ronaldo would often ask "so, would you like to be a miner?". Hell no. I typically love any tour I'm on and always wish it were longer, but 15 minutes in this mine would have been more than enough. I couldn't wait to get out. Near the end, we took another break to catch our breath and Ronaldo explained that from here, we only had a 6 minute walk to get to the exit. Upon hearing that, everyone replied 'then what the hell are we waiting for?' and got up and started walking quickly. The fresh air couldn't come soon enough.

On a lighter note, once we were outside of the mine, we got to play with something we picked up at the miner's market: anyone who wanted to could purchase their own dynamite kit for $3 ("un completo" = a stick of dynamite, a fuse, and a bag of ammonium nitrate to give it even more power). Ronaldo showed us how to prep it all, then lit the fuses and handed them to us and said "take a photo", with no sense of urgency. While he was completely comfortable with the 2-minute fuse, we were all happy to give them to him to run away with. He went about 100 metres, left them on the ground and we waited. When they went off, each one of them felt like a shot to the chest, even from that distance!