The Great South American Adventure

After Uyuni, I went to Potosi, the highest city of it´s size at an altitude of about 4 and a half thousand meters. On the bus I met a nice canadian/english couple and a cool family of four, who were travelling around the world together, who I stayed with in an awesome hostel called the Koala Den, the first Bolivian hostel with 24h, real hot water (pre heated, not electric) and comfy beds at the very economical price of 30 bolivianos per night, about AU$5. During the Spanish rule of Bolivia, Potosi was the richest city in all of the America´s, comparing to cities like London and Paris in population. All because next to the city is a large mountain that was once filled with pure silver, Cerro Rico. However, nowadays there is hardly any pure silver found and government mining operations have ceased. But cooperations, ranging from 5 to 40 miners, still mine there of their own accord, providing all there own equipment, including dynomite, which is sold freely in markets in town, and they just split the money they get from the minerals they extract, mostly a mixture of zinc, lead and a little bit of silver. These mines are also the main tourist attraction in Potosi, apart from the excellent colonial architecture from more prosperous times. We did a tour of one of the mines, which included buying gifts for the miners, soft drink, coca leaves and dynomite, and taking a stroll/crawl/climb around the interior of one of the mines to see the miners at work. We didn´t really get to see them actually digging but we saw them coming past with carts full of the material they had removed. Our guide was very insiteful about the mining and other aspects of bolivian culture and history, which made up for not really seeing that much. To put it nicely, the working conditions in the mines are very uncomfortable. Hardly any miners live past sixty, if that, because of the harmful fumes they are always inhailing, not to mention the accidents that often happen. At the end of the tour we were all very happy to be out of there, and to make us feel better we got to blow up two sticks of dynomite, which the guide lit, pretended to smoke like a cigar, then passed around for people to take photos, before his assistent took it off to a clearing on the side of the road, where it made more noise than I expected, causing me to jump and take a crap picture. That´s pretty much all I did of interest in Potosi, then I headed to Sucre, where I parted ways with my friends to find cheaper accomodation, but more about that later. Over and Out.