Hola
Here is a recap for about the last week when I travelled from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile to Sucre, Bolivia. Along the way I took a 3 day desert trip from San Pedro to the Bolivian town of Uyuni via the altiplano and the Salar de Uyuni (salt plains). From there I headed to the town of Potosi which in the 1600´s was the 2nd biggest city world owing to the huge silver deposit that was discovered right outside of the town. It also holds the claim as the worlds highest city at over 13,600 feet. After a couple of rather depressing days there I headed to the colonial town of Sucre home of the Bolivia Supreme Court.
Depressing
--The silver mine in Potosi. Honestly I don`t really even know where to start. Besides visiting Dachau this was the most depressing thing that I have ever seen in my entire life. The conditions are what I would imagine that mining conditions would have been like in the US 100 years ago. No ventilation, most of the work was done by hand and with dynamite, no light other than from headlamps, men pushing and pulling mining carts often over broken pieces of track full of 2 tons of rock through these tiny shafts meanwhile dodging rock outcroppings, wood beams, and-or cables, and shovelling all the rock by hand into the carts. This doesn`t even begin to describe the fact that the mines are operated as cooperatives so each man or mining team is working for themselves so the more they mine (and work) the more money they can make. So it is very common for the teams to work 12 hour shifts meanwhile eatting very little. They are able to ¨sustain¨themselves by drinking pop, smoking cigarettes with no filters and that have 75% nicotine, and chewing coca leaves (which acts to both supress hunger and acts as a stimulant). Of course on Fridays they also celebrate the end of the week by drinking shots of something that is labelled drinking alchohol...it is sugar cane alcohol and is something like 190 proof. Also because the mine is a cooperative, the miners can drill where they want and there is really no master plan as to where to tunnel, etc so I can only imagine how many accidents occur. The guides didn’t talk about this at all but based on all the accidents in the US this year there must be a lot each year. Luckily 7 years ago the cooperative put in electricity which allows the miners to winch up rock from the lower levels instead of having to carry the rocks up the various levels via backpacks (80 lbs) at a time. The miners now do use some ventilation masks but who knows how effective they really are with all the dust and various noxious chemicals found in the mine.
The other sad state of the mining is the accompanying processing plant where the minerals are chemically separated from the composite rock. Most of the works don’t wear masks in these plants, the chemicals are often in open containers, and they use the same means of staying awake as the miners. It takes 5 different chemical reactions to separate the zinc, tin, lead, and silver from the üseless¨rock. The chemicals involved are hydrocloric acid, sulfric acid, calcium, arsenic (I think), and cynanide. All these chemicals are sitting in 5 separate sinks (uncovered) were something like a paddlewheel scoops small amounts into plastic tubes which carries the chemicals to the separation pools where they mix with the rock. This wouldnt be half as bad if the chemicals weren’t leaking on the floor. And not to mention the separation pits where the reactions occur are all uncovered and it would be so easy to accidentally fall into one. There are 35 such plants in the hills right above Potosi (most owned by western nations with Canada owing about half) and who knows what effect the pollution from them is having on the town and nearby environment. `
I have heard different stats about life expectancy but Lonely Planet says that on average miner dies within 10 years of entering the mine while the guide said that life exxpecatancy is 45 years vs the general population of 65 years. Either way the mining section of town and the mine themselves just have a very oppressive feeling (and to me a sense of hopelessness or inevitability). It was so totally depressing and at times almost brought me to tears. Needless to say my days of buying silver may have come to an end.
--The one sad thing about Sucre was the large number of people begging for money or asking to shine your shoes. It really is a lovely town but there appears to be a large homeless population...definitely the largest number of people on the streets than I have seen during my travels.
Dumb
After what I have told you about the mine...what did I do? Of course I took a tour of the mine and factory. Of all the crazy things that I have done in my life this seriously was the most dangerous and risky. Hands down. With no real safety protocals in place, full mining carts zipping around corners and fallening off their tracks, climbing up and down rickety ladders and crawling up and down vertical shafts between levels, walking right next to separation pools full of dangerous chemicals, and combine that with all the fumes and dust just not a very safe place to be.
The Good (I decided to end this entry on a positive note)
--The Salar de Uyuni-This 3 day tour crosses the altiplano which is just spectacular and some of the best scenery that I have seen on the trip to date. We crossed a pass at a little over 16,000 feet which is the highest I have been on the trip and in my life. The altiplano in this section of the world was a flat expanse of rock and dirt…it almost looked like someone had ploughed the ground as that is how flat it looked and felt…this flat area was then surrounded by mountains that approached 20,000 feet in altitude. A lot of the mountains also had rocks that were different colors…browns, reds, and yellows which just added to the beauty. Then add in numerous salt lakes with reflections of the mountains and being full of flamingos (I have no idea how they can live in those conditions since I always have associated flamingos with warm weather)…truly amazing. We even saw one lake that changed from a greenish color to a bright blue as the wind mixed the nutrients in the lake. The whole trip made me feel really really small as I was surrounded by huge mountains and the horizon looked and felt like it went on forever. I also had to laugh when on the 2nd day there were clouds hanging over the peaks...I kept thinking man the clouds are low today...then I remembered that the ¨low¨ clouds were obscuring the summits of peaks approaching 20,000 feet. So that is how I sepnt the 1st 2 days of the tour…seeing mountains, lakes, cool balancing rocks located in the middle of the desert, seeing fumaroles (steam vents) and mud volcanos, etc. The 3rd day was spent on the Salar de Uyuni (Salt Flats of Uyuni). Since this is the rainy season the salt flat was actually flooded with a couple of inches of water…this allowed for really cool reflections of the mountains and sky. It was also pretty cool walking around in the middle of this salt lake that only exists for a couple of months a year. I also meet some cool people during the trip and have been traveling with a number of them since. This trip was definitely a highlight of my trip.
--Potosi-I visited a really cool museum that used to be the home of the Spanish and Bolivian mint (the Potosi silver mine is the biggest in the world). They had an interesting collection of machines to make coins dating back from the 1500s to 1953. One interest think about the old coins is that the shape of the coin was unimportant but it was all about the weight. That would explain why all the old coins are all sorts of random shapes and sizes. I also learned that Bolivia along with a lot of countries currently do not mint or print their own coins and currency. The guide explained it that it was too expensive and the modern counterfeiting techonology too advanced for Bolivia and as he pointed out when I verified that they stopped minting coins in the 50´s is they have better things to spend their money on (ie social welfare and infrastructure).
--Sucre-A pretty mellow town with a lot of colonial architechure which means lots of white buildings, adobe tiled roofs, and second floor balconies. Plus a lot of churches. The center of town by the market and main plaza is really busy but just a couple of blocks away the traffic and noise amazingly disappears. It is just a good town to hang out in and relax and eat some good bolivian food (soups-one speciality is corn soup and a dish called Pique de Macho--french fries covered with steak, hot dogs, onions, peppers, eggs and some sort of sauce) especially from the cafes that are in the mountains above town. Perhaps the best part is that the market is just full of fresh fruit and veggies along with all sorts of other food stuff (flan and meat including whole pigs and cows heads (yuck!). I think that I may have eatten more fruit here than I ate in the last month in Argentia...I especially appreciate all the fruit juices. Yummy. I also went on a tour of a cement mine where they discovered the tracks of a number of dinosaurs. It was pretty cool to see fossilized dinosaur prints on a rock face (it is a vertical wall due to tetonic uplifting a long time ago). And finally I spent some time at a weaving museum which was actually really cool and did an excellent job of explaining (in english) how the weavings are made and the signifigance behind the images. Believe it or not it was really neat.
Next Up
I flew to La Paz today (the highest capital in the world and only a couple hundred feet below Potosi) and am flying up to the Amazon on Tuesday. Hopefully I will get to see a lot of wildlife as that is one aspect of the trip that I have been a little disappointed in...not as much wildlife sightings as I would like.
Pictures
512k (and that may be generous) internet connections appear to be the norm in Boliva and 2 MB pics just can’t get uploaded so that is why there are so few pics this time. At least you can see pics of my neices!
Love
Scott
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