Silver Mines and Salt Flats

I arrived to La Paz about two weeks ago, still shivering from the winds off Lake Titicaca, and with the added disappointment of being turned down from the first three hostals whose doors we knocked on.

I say we, because I had been traveling with a Portuguese girl, Nora, who I had met in Machu Pichu and ran into again at Puno, on the Peruvian shore of the lake. Seeing as we were both traveling alone and in a strange new country, we decided to join forces for a few days.

In La Paz, I just had to stay warm and keep my spirits up long enough to receive reinforcements; or that is, one of my best friends from Peace Corps, Josh Kagan, would be flying in to meet me and travel for a couple of weeks in Bolivia before returning to the United States together.

Josh was arriving at an extremely opportune time, as I was feeling a bit worn down by the Bolivian winter, a cold that had been hounding me for several weeks, and the numerous discomforts of being on the road for over two months.

I can count on one hand the few people that I can handle traveling abroad with for prolonged periods of time. These are friends that I can arrange to meet with on a certain street corner, at a determined time, halfway around the world, with about 99% certainty they will be there at the appointed hour.

Josh was one of those few. He is fluent in Spanish, extremely flexible, has a great sense of humor, and possesses a common sense that is essential for traveling.

We had already traveled together often in Nicaragua and inside of Costa Rica during Peace Corps. On a busy street in any given Latin American city, trying to plot a course, a couple quick words or a head nod in one direction is usually all the communication that is necessary between us. (When in a new city it´s always best to at least give the illusion you know where you are going at all times.)

On Monday July 19th, at the agreed upon hour of 9am, I walked into a hostal in downtown La Paz and found Josh sitting in a chair in the courtyard, exactly where he said he would be.

¨Heayygghh man¨, Josh greeted me! He got up, and I walked over to give him a hug and a couple of bro-pounds on the back. It had been more than two months, since our last day in San José, Costa Rica in May, when I´d seen him last.

But something was wrong. He sounded terrible. His voice hoarse and barely audible.

It turned out Josh had spent a hard two nights of partying in Washington D.C. with friends before catching the red-eye flight on Sunday night down to Miami, and then La Paz. The nights on the town and the late flight had coincided with a cold that had been brewing for a few days, and seemed to have completely matured by the time of our greeting in La Paz.

So instead of the cavalry, I got a wounded foot soldier limping into battle. Instead of a fresh and rested Mariano Rivera coming in for the save, I had an injured and bloody Curt Schilling trying to pull out the win.

Okay, I jest. Josh was still coming in to help me finish in style the last two weeks of what has been an incredible trip. He would just need a couple nights rest and a few days of antibiotics to get back into form.

Unfortunately, the rest never came. Our first night was spent in, for all purposes, appeared to be a cold, attic at a hostal/Irish pub we stayed at in La Paz. Josh´s condition only worsened.

Our second night, resolving to get the hell out of La Paz, we boarded a night bus to take us down to the mining town of Potosí. A huelga, or strike, on the main road south from La Paz to Uyuni had forced us to change our plans slightly, opting to see Potosí first, and then the Salt Flats outside of Uyuni.

We fared better on the night bus to Potosí then in the cold attic in La Paz, and around 6am we rolled into the Potosí bus terminal. We quickly hopped into a cab that took us to the downtown, found decent lodging with heating, and then quickly laid down for a nap as soon as we entered our room.

Everything I had read about Potosí fascinated me, and frankly this small, little-known town was one of the main reasons I wanted to visit Bolivia.

Potosí is known as the highest city in the world, set at an elevation of around 4,100 meters. It is also the location of Cerro Rico (or the rich mountain), the most productive silver mine the world has ever known.

The Spanish discovered silver there in 1544, and deciding it warranted immediate attention, set up a mining operation around the cerro. For the next three centuries the Spanish would remove more than 45,000 tons of silver from the mountain.

Potosí would become the Spanish empire´s principal source of silver, financing its numerous wars, and causing the first prolonged inflation in Europe since the Dark Ages as a result of expansion of the money supply.

To work the mines, the Spanish employed a system known as mita, or forced labor by the local indigenous populations, as well as by black slaves brought in from Africa. The miners would work extremely long hours, up to 12 hours a day, and at high temperatures extracting ore from under the mountain. To sustain themselves, the miners chewed enormous quantities of coca leaves and drank alcohol, in nearly pure form, to keep them working. They would stay under the mountain working for ¨shifts¨ of up to four months, finally emerging to the outside world only by placing bandages over their eyes, which were completely unaccustomed to the sunlight.

The majority of the miners would perish of psilicosis pneumonia after less than 10 years working in the cerro. It is estimated that in the three centuries of Spanish mining, as many as 8 million indigenous and black laborers perished as a result of the mita system.

Potosí itself became a center of great importance. In the late 1600´s, the city had a population of over 200,000, larger than either Paris or London at that time. It was home to architecture and fine art, with more than eighty churches built within the city perimeter.

Today, Potosí is still a mining center, but on the decline, with a population of roughly 120,000, or 80,000 less than at its height. The conditions in the mines also have improved immeasurably, right?

Wrong. Actually the miners still work under extremely difficult conditions, although they are now organized under cooperatives, and largely reap the gains from their own labor.

On our second day in Potosí, Josh and I took a tour of the Potosí mines. Our guide was a young man, of about our own age, who had 15 years experience working in the mines (he began when working with his father in the mines when he was about 12 years old). He picked us up around 9am from our hostal, and led us to our first stop, a small road-side supply center for miners.

There, in an alley not far from the center of Potosí, we bought supplies and gifts for the miners - things like coca leaves, small flasks of alcohol, liters of soda, and a few sticks of dinamite.

Well provisioned, we continued on to the mines, where we were given helmets, head lanterns, and full clothing to cover us from the soot and dust of the mine. Once we were prepared, we entered a mine shaft.

We proceeded slowly along the shaft, at the farthest point in the tour reaching more than 700 meters, or more than 2000 feet into the mine. As we walked further into the mountain, we would constantly have to stop our movement and cling to the sides of the tunnel, as working miners continued by us moving their mining carts filled with materials on small railways. The temperature also reached up to 90 degrees Farenheit as we went further under the mountain.

I had never been in a mine shaft before, much less in a working mine. The miners walking by us had their cheeks full of coca leaves, used to give them more energy and allow them to handle the hard labor. They also drank regulary from small, plastic flasks of alcohol, which we tried and tasted almost completely pure, much like rubbing alcohol.

During the rest of tour, which consisted of more than two hours underground, we were shown small temples the miners had erected in side shafts, where they would take breaks and make offerings to the idols. We were also shown veins of silver and tin that the miners were still working.

Once we´d exited the mine shaft, our guide gave us a dinamite demonstration. He showed us how the fuse was connected to the dinamite stick, and after lighting the fuse, insisted we all pose for a photo with the lit dinamite. We all hurried to comply. Finally, he took the dinamite to a site about 40 meters from us, laid the stick of dinamite on the rock surface outside of the mountain, and then continued in the other direction to await its explosion. The resulting concussion took the air out of our lungs.


Josh and I outside of the mine shaft.

Having satisfied my curiosity of Potosí with the mine tour, Josh and I continued on the next day to Uyuni, farther southwest near the border with Chile. Uyuni is traditionally the place where groups contract tours of the neighboring salt flats and Parque Laguna Colorado. And so we were going to Uyuni to do just that.

We awoke the morning after arriving to Uyuni and quickly contracted a company to give us a tour of the salt flats. The tours are done by 4x4 Land Cruiser, meaning the tourists hire a driver/guide to take them out into the salt flats and beyond to the national park. The normal tour these days takes about 3 days and covers over more than 500 kilometers during the tour.

The three day tour was amazing. We saw landscapes that I would have never even been able to imagine. We were basically touring a desert located at 4,000 meters of altitude. The surrounding scenery was desolate and bleak, but beautiful at the same time. We traveled through one of the world´s largest salt flats, saw red volcanic mountains, and green salt lakes at nearly 5,000 meters of elevation. I have never seen anything like it.




Some scenes from the tour.

We also made some great friends on the trip. Of the three other people sharing the Land Cruiser with us there was a Swedish couple, Marco and Eva, and a young New Zealander doing some touring after she spent almost two years in the UK. They were a lot of fun to hang out with, and I think we all left extremely happy with the experience.

After a rough 3 days in the Land Cruiser and putting up with the cold (temperature reached down to 0 degrees Farenheit at night), Josh and I have continued on to Sucre.

Sucre is a beautiful colonial town, located at roughly 2,700 meters of elevation, with pleasant weather, beautiful Spanish architecture, good restaurants, and a live University scene. Here we have been relaxing for a few days before heading back to La Paz to complete our time in Bolivia.

This afternoon we board a night bus back to La Paz, and then after a couple of lazy days buying souvenirs in the capital, will board flights back to the US on Sunday night.

Going Home

For me I find it hard to believe, and even a little saddening, that my adventure is coming to a close. That said, I´m extremely proud of the things I´ve seen and done during the last few months.

In less than three days, I will land back in Atlanta, which should be quite a shock, moving from a Bolivian winter to the southern heat, not too mention all the cultural factors.

Once home, I hope to take some time to reflect on the last two and a half years in Latin America, and try to share some of these ideas via the blog.