De Bolivia y otras aventuras mineras

We´ve entered Bolivia (walking) with a great shock: lots of tiny people carrying weights of over 50 kg. Men and women at the same time. It´s not the first shoking picture so far, anyway.

The bus ticket to Potosi was incredibly cheap: 2 euros per person for 10 hours of ride. But... the shocking thing was that the distance was of only 240 km!! So we have started our jurney through Bolivia, the cheapest country of South America.

Potosi is the highest city in the world: 4100 m of altitude. We could feel that from the first moments (headaches and dizzyness). Nothing that can´t be solved with some coca leafs... We were expecting the worst, but were pretty amazed to see a beautiful town with familiar colonial buildings.

The first day we only walked around trying to get used to the altitude. Eating and drinking at extremly low prices. And went to see a bolivian movie at the cinema. Such a cold cinema: brrrr!!

Right near the town there is the famous Cerro Rico, the mountain that was the reason for creating this town. Full of minerals that were very attractive to the spanish conquistadores. It´s strange but from all the mountains in the area, it´s the only one that has minerals. With over 10,000 mines, you can only wonder how come it´s not collapsing.

We went visiting with a guide (ex miner) one of the mines that had silver and zinc. Only 60 miners were working there, the youngest had 14 years old. It was one impressive visit. We were dressed as miners to protect our clothes and bought gifts for the miners (bottles of 96 degrees alchool, bags of coca to chew, juice and dynamite).

As one could imagine, the work there is incredibly difficult, miners having to carry sometimes with their backs the minerals outside. And the salary? Well, if you had the luck to work with a fixed salary it was around 5 to 7 euros a day. If not, you can also spend weeks without being paid. But that is not the worst part. The worst part is that they almost don´t get to see the sunlight and also, after years of work they can get breathing deseases. Number of deaths: around 10-15 a year and most of them not because walls collapse, but because the strong alchool would get them so drunk they would fell in the deep pits. Now that´s a hard life.

The end of the tour finished with a visit to the local god of the mines, a statue of the devil of course. Every mine had it´s own. This one was called ¨tio Jorge¨. Miners would praise him, bring gifts and ask for whishes. And another thing: women are not allowed to go into the mine. The local women that is. Because the mine godess could get jelous and bring only bad luck to the miners.

But enough amazement for one day! The rest we spent it relaxing. With a visit to the market where I got really angry because the local vendors gave us extremly high prices just because we were foreigners.

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