The next leg of our adventure took us to Potosi, the highest city in the world at 4100m and home to some of the finest sunsets we have ever seen! Founded in Spanish colonial times the city was once one of the largest and richest in the world equal in size to London in the 17th century. The city was built on the riches of Cerro Rico ´rich hill´ which was the greatest source of silver the world has ever seen. As well as financing Spanish wars and impacting inflation in Europe, the vast riches were used to build 31 beautiful colonial churches and over 2000 colonial buildings. Indeed when the Spanish viceroy came to visit the streets were literally paved with silver. All this came at a great cost however to the indigenous and african workers, as it is estimated that between 9 and 12 million miners died in the horrendous working conditions of Cerro Rico over the last 450 or so years. Indeed, the Spanish forced a seventh of the Andean male population to work in the mines for no pay. Many never returned and this has been cited as one of the key reasons for the dramatic population fall in the Andes.
The glory days of the city have long since gone as little remains of the rich silver veins. Today the 10,000 or so co-operative subsistence miners seek lesser ores like lead, tin and zinc, although, many still dream of striking it rich and rumours of a solid siver cone in the centre of Cerro Rico still persist. To see for ourselves, we went on a tour of the mine risking life and limb in the process, as well as our respiratory health - arsenic being one of the many unpleasant gases available for inhaltion. Upon starting their career, the average life expectancy for a miner in Cerro Rico is 15 - 20 years. Sadly the workforce also includes about 1000 children. The conditions inside were abysmal. We had to crouch and stoop through the dark, damp and claustrophobic tunnels as we followed the mine cart tracks deeper into the mountain. Our helmets saved our heads on many occasions as we bumped into the low supporting beams, some of which looked extremely precarious. The miners are deeply superstitious and we were fascinated by the depictions of El Tio and Pachamama. Upon entering the mine and venturing beyond the last rays of daylight one encounters El Tio (King of the Underworld), a rather scary looking devil like figure with a very large erect phallus. He is covered in offerings of coca, black tobacco cigarettes, streamers, llama blood and bottles of ´Bolivian whisky´ which is 96% alcohol. Offerings must be made to El Tio to ensure safety and bountiful riches while inside the mine. Pachamama is the goddess of earth and is housed in a different shrine along with Jesus and protects miners upon leaving the mine. Similar offerings are left for the Pachamama. After we had tried our hand at some back-breaking labour (at 4200m! phew!) we sat with the miners sharing sips of Bolivian whisky, chewing coca and listening to their fascinating stories. It was an amazing and humbling experience and one we won´t forget in a hurry.
We were so happy to see daylight when we emerged that we celebrated by blowing up a stick of dynamite. The fuse lasted two and a half minutes and we all took it in turns holding the lit dynamite before our guide ran off with it to a safe distance. The explosion was deafening and very impressive. You can watch video of it below! Scarily, Potosi is the only place in Bolivia where the sale of dynamite, ammonia nitrate and detonators is unregulated. Just imagine all the intoxicated miners blowing up dynamite inside of a mine that our guide said is like ´Swiss cheese´and is in imminent danger of collapse in the next 5 or 10 years...... ESTAN LOCO!!
After being miners for a day we soothed our aching muscles in the nearby hotsprings of Ojo del Inca (Eye of the Inca), a magnificient 50m diameter natural hot spring. Bubbles rise in the centre of the pool and legend has it that that unwary bathers who venture to the middle will be sucked down to a hot muddy death. While we were there, we didn´t see anyone brave enough to test the legend. However, many others (including ourselves) had great fun plastering ourselves in the mineral rich mud which gave our skin a nice rosy glow.
Following on from Potosi we moved on to the capital of Bolivia, Sucre. Although capital in name, it is only a small city of 210,000 people and lacks the vibrancy and economic muscle of the defacto capital, La Paz. Known as the ´white city of the Americas´due to the predominance of white washed buildings, Sucre boasts some of the finest colonial architecture in South America. The city is also famed for its delicious array of chocolate shops and saltenerias (a delicious meat and gravy pasty). After a taste test of the treats on offer we promptly decided that this would be an excellent place to study Spanish for a week. Our language skills improved immensely over the week and it was well worth the effort. We also improved our nature count with an impromptu display put on by some busy hummingbirds, including one that was barely larger than a bumblebee. We were also fortunate enough to see the world´s biggest collection of dinosaur footprints at Cal Orko. There are about 5,000 footprints from at least 150 different species of dinosaur.... ROAR!!!!
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