When I read one description of the Potosi mines I wasn’t all that keen on visiting. It said they have been described as “the mouth of hell” and that visitors should be aware that a trip down into them is both physically and emotionally draining. However, out of sheer curiosity (Sophie’s, not mine!) we made the long journey south from La Paz. An overnight bus to pretty much any destination in Bolivia will get you in at about 6am. I have thought a lot about why they schedule them like this. Is it because some people are doing a long commute and need to get to where they’re going in time for work? Do the bus companies prefer to avoid the morning rush hour? Surely not, given that the bus terminals are usually on the edge of town. The trouble is, they often run ahead of schedule. The 6am arrival time clearly has some margin in it meaning that you’re likely to rock up at anything from five o’clock in the morning. You’d think a bus getting in early is a good thing. Well, with the kind of temperatures you get in the Bolivian mountain range, it’s not. You arrive to freezing pre-dawn temperatures (at least that’s how it feels) and have nowhere to go because there isn’t a café or a restaurant open.
This was the scenario for Potosi. A taxi driver took us into town on the promise that there would be a café open at seven in the morning. It turned out there wasn’t. He would have said anything to get the fare. The only action in town was a few folks at the market setting up their stalls.
Around eight in the morning the owner of a place called The Koala Café opened its doors and let in two shivering souls with heavy backpacks (us). We ordered some tea and attempted to thaw our bones.
Who should walk in half an hour later but Bart, our one-time fellow student at a Quito language school. He, like us, had also been travelling south. I was relieved to find he had shaken off the advances of my Spanish teacher – not before she had stalked him all the way to Lima!
Bart had things sorted. He had a hostel and had booked himself on a tour of the Potosi mines leaving at 9am, along with an Englishman called Mohammed. Feeling not so fresh after our overnight bus journey, we decided to join them. After all, what would have been the point in going for a shower only to enter a mineshaft half an hour later?
To enter the Potosi mines you need more than overalls, boots and a hard hat. You need gifts for the miners. The mines at Potosi, although no longer rich with silver or tin still contain around 10,000 miners and they fuel themselves on coca leaves and 94% alcohol – called Bolivian whiskey. The only other thing they appreciate being given is dynamite. What better present to give a drugged-up drunk person in a confined space?
Buying alcohol and coca and then dynamite a few doors up was a surreal experience. The dynamite, we were assured, would pose no threat without the fuse and detonator attached. Still, with all three thrown into a plastic bag, I treated it with caution. Off we went to the mines.
Our guide, himself a one-time miner before he saw a better life for himself in tourism, took us in and down into the depths of the earth. It is warm down there. He explained what the smears of blood on the walls were. Not that of unsuspecting tourists, but of unsuspecting llamas (or even more disgusting, llama foetuses) that had been sacrificed and offered to the Tio – their devil-like God, if that makes sense. For the mining world apparently belongs to the devil and in return he will give you up some silver or mineral in return. I think at this point I needed some coca or alcohol to appreciate the symbolism in full.
We came across miners from time to time. They were small people who didn’t say a lot. Being small is definitely an advantage in a mine, as you can imagine. It wasn’t so easy for a 6ft 6 Dutchman called Bart! However, we all made it down a couple of levels (there are nine in total) and survived some frighteningly rickety ladders in the process. Eventually we came to a corridor that even the heavily doped miners in front advised was too dangerous. They were propping up the tunnel with planks of wood and said it was too hazardous for us. We turned around and headed back, not before giving up some of the last of our dynamite.
Before entering the mines I had thoughts of what a terrible job being a miner would be and it seemed almost unbelievable that the UK had a large mining workforce as recent as the 1980s. Coming out of the mines I felt lacking in compassion for the miners. Perhaps that was due to an insight into their mindset – apparently it is an ‘every man for himself’ one where even murder has been covered up as an accident. Three years or so ago, it was also good business, when a new but short-lived seam of tin was found. At this time, miners could be seen driving about town in Hummers, which I would have loved to have seen. With a poorer market for tin and minerals and with the mountain not yielding as much at this time, it is not happy days for the miners. They believe that they will find more the deeper they go. UNESCO believes that the whole thing will literally collapse and is campaigning against the constant hunt for the legendary pot of silver, apparently hidden deep within the bowels of the earth.
We didn’t get to explode any dynamite within the mines. That’s probably for the best. However our guide had kept one stick up his sleeve, which once assembled and lit, we got to play with – it had a long fuse, don’t worry, Mum! He walked twenty feet away, planted it and we waited for the explosion. We waited and waited. They say don’t return to a lit firework and that must be especially so for dynamite. BANG! It was a deafening noise and a vibration of the earth accompanied by a puff of smoke. Yes, that was best done out in the open! Occasionally Latin America dishes up something that you just can’t do in Europe and this tour was definitely one of them!
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