Potosi

We´ve made our way north to a mining town called Potosi. The city is at 12,200 feet (actually the highest city in the world) so we have to walk slowly and we´re winded all the time. It is really cold at night and it´s alright during the day when the sun´s out and it gets up to 50 or so. The city is interesting enough and we had a scenic drive here through the mountains from the salt plains two days ago. Yesterday we went on a tour of the silver mines to which this town owes its existence. That tour was probably the craziest thing we have done on this entire trip thus far. There are 300 mines run by 12,000 workers on this huge mountain and they are all cooperatives, basically they are all working for themselves. Being Bolivia, this was no controlled mine situation. We went down five levels into this mine through shafts and spaces barely large enough to crawl thorugh. The air was filled with dust and we saw a bunch of workers on the third and fifth levels pushing ore on these olde tyme carts on rails a la indiana jones. There was little air and it was hard to breathe. Two of the 8 people on our tour couldn´t handle it and had to be taken out. We gave gifts of soda and dynamite to the workers for allowing us to tour their mine which we bought at the miner´s market before we went down. All told we were in the mine for three hours and by the time we got back to the surface we were more than thrilled to see the light. These guys work in appalling conditions 10-12 hours a day 6 days a week doing ridiculously difficult physical labor. Sometimes they even work 24 hour shifts. They chew coca leaves for energy and most of them die within 10-20 years of entering the mine from lung cancer. But everyone was in great spirits—they believe that they will have accidents and won´t locate any silver if they work with a bad attitude. When we got to the surface they blew up a stick of dynamite wrapped in ammonium nitrate for our entertainment. It was an enlightening experience to say the least.