Potosi Silver Mines

We were hoping to get this post up tonight when we got to Cafayate, but after arriving at the bus station for our 3:00pm we found out it was actually a 5:00pm bus.  We were bummed out until we found a power outlet and free wifi! As an added bonus terminals in Argentina are safe in comparison to any of the previous places we have been.  There is even a pharmacy, which is handy as we have been passing back and forth a very inconvenient sinus cold.

After Sucre we headed back to Potosi and arranged a tour of a silver mine on Cerro Rico for the next morning.  The tours are led by ex-miners and you visit working mines so you are able see the working conditions in the mines.  We were told that conditions haven't changed much in the past 400 years.  Initially we were hesitant to go into the mines for a few reasons.  Our guide book didn't fail to point out all the dangers and unpleasantries of the mines.  After spending some time in Potosi, watching a documentary (The Devil's Miner), talking to other travellers, and Dewey's persistance we figured it would be an experience we couldn't miss.

We "suited up" (protective suits, boots, hard hats, and lamps) and took a micro bus up to the Miner's Market.  There we were instructed to buy gifts for the miners; dynamite, nitroglycerin, fuses, and detonators.  Potosi is one of the only places in the world where anyone can buy dynamite legally, on the street without a license.  Other gifts included; coca leaves, chewable alkali, 96% pure alcohol, unfiltered cigarettes, and juice.  The miners chew up to a bag of coca leaves a day while in the mines to as it supposedly works to fight hunger, filter dust, and maintain alertness.  The alkali help release the alkaloids from the coca leaves. The alcohol is used both as an intoxicant and as an offering to El Tio (the God of the mines). Lisa had a problem with buying cigarettes and alcohol for the miners so we bought dynamite, juice, and coca instead. You had to buy at least some of these items in order to go on the mine tour and throughout the tour we handed these out to working miners that we passed in the tunnels.

We were invited to take a sip of the 96% alcohol.  Alex decided to give it a try and it basically evaporated (probably for the better) upon contact.  Note the Canada Dry label above!?

The miners don't work on salary, so their earnings depend on what minerals they can find and their quality.  They are responsible for buying all of their own supplies and as a result our gifts of dynamite were greatly appreciated.  We were also told that theft is very prevelant in the mines and often miners will find themselves working for a week just to afford new equipment. 

The trolley below weights around 1 tonne and the two miners in the back are the man power and the miner in the front steers.

According to our guide book, "Work is done mostly by hand with basic tools, and underground tmeratures vary from below freezing to a stifling 45 degrees Celcius.  Miners, exposed to myriad noxious chemicals, often die of silicosis pneumonia within 10 years of entering the mines". Unfortunately, over 800 children (mostly from families without a father) still work in the mines.  Women are not allowed to work in the mines as it is cosidered bad luck, but many women are employed to guard the tools outside the mines. The walls of the tunnels were covered with asbestos and arsenic. When we asked our guide why the miners don't wear masks he said that chewing coca and smoking cigarettes prevents the toxins from entering the miners lungs (??).

As a result of the dangers, many men nowadays only work in the mines for a couple of years.  The less fortunate are obliged to keep working in order to make a living. 

The miners believe that God can't help them in the mines and therefore they worship El Tio.  There is at least one Tio in each mine and hundered of independent mines tunnel through the mountain. Mines often stretch for around 14km and can have as many as 16 levels. The mines often intersect each other if they are following the same mineral vein.  Miners feel obligated to make generous offering to El Tio to keep them safe while they are in the mines.  You can see coca leaves, cigarettes, and full alcohol bottles scattered around El Tio.  Worshiping El Tio is believed to aid fertility.

The quality of the photos is poor since the tunnels were dark and dusty and it would have been foolish to bring the Nikon.  We thought a good alternative was Lisa's drop-proof, water-proof, point and shoot.  We were in the mines for about two hours and explored the first three levels.  To change levels you had to descend ladders through steep dark holes.  Our guide cautioned us not to wiggle the ladders too much or look up since falling rocks were not uncommon.  At one point one of the miners set off some dynamite on the path that was also our only exit and we waited around the corner for the blast.  You could definitely feel it!

This video is of us squeezing (literally) through a small hole between levels.  There is only one exit to the mine, so everywhere we went down we knew were coming back up.



Overall, the whole experience (while it may not have been comfortable) was very eye-opening and educational.  We will definitely think twice before complaing about work conditions in Canada.

Tupiza, Tarija, Potosi and Sucre

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Our 4-day desert Jeep adventure ended in Tupiza. We stayed in the Annex of hotel Mitru, which was a cheaper option, but still allowed us to use their pool... so we spent a good day doing laundry, lounging by the pool and exploring Tupiza. The market in Tupiza was a dark maze of little tin stalls, selling everything imaginable. We bought some snacks and wire to fix Lisa's pack (the strap broke!).

The next day, Kayleigh and Russ rented some horses and a guide to explore the nearby Cayon del Inca, but ourselves and Dewey opted for the D.I.Y. route and just followed the horse prints out of town and up to the canyon.  

We saw the famous Devil's gate, and climbed around  a bit on it.

People on horseback could only make it so far up the canyon, where you encountered a fairly vertical rock face. We stopped here for lunch (the classic: tuna, bread, apples) then decided to see how far up the Canyon we could get. It was a fun hike up the cayon, with a few places where we got to do some good bouldering. 

The hike up the canyon wasn't a marked trail, and we did a fair bit of guesswork as to where we were going. You can't say we were lost, because there wasn't really a route to begin with. We were hoping to come out the other side of the canyon, but after trying two different routes, gave up and went back the way we came in.

Going down bouldering routes is often more challenging than finding a way up...

After Tupiza we all took a night bus to Tarija, the main city in Bolivia's wine region. The two cities look very close on a map, but the bus was scheduled to take 10 hours. This should have been some indication to the quality of the road... and it was. Another unpaved, switchback, single track road... in the fog. The bus was beyond basic, and we got bumped around pretty good (what can you expect for $5?). At some point in the middle of the night we woke up and realized we were stopped, and had been for a good couple hours (hence why we were actually asleep). It was just begining to get light out, and we could see that there were other buses and trucks stopped in front and behind us, but couldn't figure out what was going on. We never really did figure out what was going on, but it was possibly a truck strike (a few weeks earlier, bus drivers in Bolivia had striked for 3 days because a new law had been passed making it illegal for bus drivers to drink and drive!!). Most of the locals had gotten off the bus, but we started to move (very slowly) and Lisa made the mistake of standing up and looking out the window to see what was going on... and we were pretty much inches from the edge of a cliff. It appears that the bus driver decided to pass the trucks on the one-track road (after 2 hours of debating the safety of doing so), and then all the locals cheered and got back on the bus. Just another bizarre Bolivian bus situation.

We arrived to Tarija hours later than planned, but that turned out to be fine, because it's hard to find a hostel at 4:30 am anyways. We stayed at Zeballos hostel, a rough-around-the edges hostel run by a disfunctional extended family. They would have loud, spanish arguments, right outside our non-even-remotely-soundproof dorm room at silly hours in the morning. We ended up staying a few nights mostly out of convenience. We tried tamales (meat and corn bread stuffed in a corn husk and steamed), and local breakfast at the market too (chorizo with bread and salad). We also went out for steak dinner one night, and were intrigued by the steak-dinner-for-two on the menu, so we ordered it and out came a mini grill full with various cuts of beef (including heart, intestine, ribs, steak, sausage....) and nothing else (well, there were potato fries). We ate all but the two sketchiest looking pieces of meat.

We caught a micro bus (along with all the local school children) to the nearby village of Tomatitas for some soft-shelled crab (a local specialty) and a hike to a waterfall. When we got there, the river was all but dried up, so we didn't bother hiking up to the waterfall. We ordered soft-shell crab (pictured below), enjoyed some Bolivian wine, and played cards instead. Below is our lunch... not as bad as it looks, but not as good as it was reputed to be either. The white stuff is dried white corn kernels, soaked and then cooked.

The next day we went on a wine tour of the Tarija wine region. We arranged for an english guide and a tour of 5 wineries, but got a Spanish guide and 3 wineries. Lisa acted as the translator, but it's always a bit difficult to translate specialized vocabulary.

We tried straight Singani, a famous 40-proof local spirit made from white grapes. It was unbearably toxic. We later discovered it to be much better in Chuflay form (singani, sprite, and lime). 

Below is a natural wonder of the wine region. The pressure from the lake built up and caused the rock to split, creating this very deep canyon. We'd tell you more about it, but that was all Lisa could manage to translate.

After Tarija, we headed back up north to Potosi. It was backtracking a bit, but there is really no way not to do so in Bolivia. The night bus was atrocious, as usual. Locals don't use earphones here (they just blare their music from their cellphones), babies crying, locals trying to sell food on the bus, and crappy music blaring from a broken (and screeching) speaker right above our heads. There was a even a cat, but it was pretty quiet. For some reason, they also leave the windows open on the bus, and the dust from the dirt roads fills the bus. Buses also stop frequently to let people off to pee, and try to fill up the bus with more passengers (or in this case, overfill the bus so that people end up sleeping in the aisles). We got to Potosi around 3 in the morning, and checked into Hostal La Casona.

Potosi is a fascinating city with a lot of history. It is the highest city in the world, at 4090 meters above sea level. Behind the city is Cerro Rico mountain. In 1546, silver was discovered in Cerro Rico, and the city rapidly became one of the largest, and wealthiest cities in the world. Over 40,000 tonnes of silver were mined in the first 200 years, but caused the death of between 8 and 12 million slaves (no, that is not a typo). Cerro Rico is known as the "mountain that eats people". We wanted to tour the mines, but arrived on a Sunday, and locals don't work in the mines on Mondays, and guides (ex-miners) don't work on Sundays, we we decided to go to Sucre for a few days and come back.

We tried Viscacha (that cute rabit-like creature from our last post), in a spicy sauce. It was very tasty, but a fair bit of work to eat. There was also a decent amount of fur in the dish. We tried out best to try ALL the Bolivian culinary specialites!

We took a shared taxi to Sucre from Potosi, because the cost between that at a local bus was only negligibly different. Sucre, known as the white city, had a very different feel from other cities in Bolivia. The city is very clean, and fairly wealthy. Buildings are required to be whitewashed every year.

We tried several restaurants and internet cafes trying to get our pictures uploaded for the blog, but internet has been notoriously poor in Bolivia. We eventually discovered a small mexican restaurant which had wifi, so we ate dinner, sipped Chuflay's and played cards for hours while our pictures uploaded (success!).

You are supposed to be able to climb the building below to get a great view of the city, but it wasn't open when we tried.  

We finally got a hang of the eating schedule in Bolivia. Lunch is from 12 until 3, "tea" is between 5 and 7, and dinner after 8pm. One afternoon, during tea, we sampled 6 different local speciality snacks at an adorable cafe (Salon de Te Las Delicias). We tried sonso (pictured below; mashed Yuca and cheese baked on a stick), empanadas de arroz (fried rice cakes), empanadas de pollo (chicken baked in a pastry package), cunape (mystery dough with cheese), some plantain and cheese pastry cake thing (we forget the name), and humintas (a type of corn bread with cheese steamed in a corn husk). Our favorites were the humintas and the sonso.

We spent a couple days in Sucre enjoying the warm temperature and laid back atmosphere, then headed back to Potosi. We nearly missed our bus because we didn't time things right and there wasn't a vacant taxi to be found when we needed to get to the terminal. We eventually found one, and the kind cabby rushed us there as fast as he could. We figured we would be fine, because buses never leave on time here, but we arrived at 1:00 on the dot, and the bus had already left. Fortunately, the locals were extremely kind, and offered to call the bus, and ask it to wait at the next stop, while we jumped in a cab and rushed off to catch up with the bus. Intersections here aren't very orderly; the first car into the intersection gets to go. If it's a blind corner (as most are), the cab will honk to let cars coming from other directions know that he's entering the intersection. We caught up with the bus after 15 minutes or so, and hopped on.

Salar de Uyuni

Only about 5% of roads in Bolivia are paved. The reality of this really hit home on our first night bus in Bolvia, from La Paz to Uyuni. The bus left at 9pm, and the driver assistant advised us to try and sleep for the first few hours, before we hit the bumpy dirt roads. We're not sure the "roads" were even really roads... more of rutted paths through the desert. We were due to arrive around 7:00, but by now we've learnt this means 9:00, so we arrived around then, met our guide, found Dewey, loaded our gear on top of the jeep, and had some breakfast. Our guide, Archie, and driver, Carmelo, went to buy an iPOD cord from the market while we ate breakfast, and we all took this is a really good sign of the good times to be had on the next four days of our trip. We set out and first visisted the "train graveyard", a collection of old, rusty trains abandonned (and now considered to be a historical site) from war times.

From there, we headed out into the vast expanse of the Salar de Uyuni. The salt flats, which cover an area of 12 106 squared kilometers, are the evaporated remains of an old lake. For as far as the eye can see, there is bright, white, salt, with volcanoes in the distance. During parts of the year, the flats are flooded, and innavigable due to zero visibility from the reflections. We stopped for lunch, and took a silly amount of photos, taking advantage of the illusions created by the white expanse of salt and bright, cloudless blue sky.

Up close, you can see that the salt has dried in hexagonical shapes, and you could break free large chunks of salt, and lick them (if you wanted). We also stopped at some thermal pools, where chemicals (including lithium) bubbled to the surface. For those who have visited Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, you would notice the striking similarity (other than the salt, of course). There are "islands" in the middle of the salt flats and after many hours of driving, we stopped as Isla del Pescado (a.k.a. Isla Incahuasi), a cactus-covered island in the middle of the sea of salt. We wandered around the island, with it's many 1000+ year old cacti, and bizarre rock formations.

Mirages and illusions made the whole place seem surreal, and was easy to see how you could easily get lost in the desert, especially if the salt plains were flooded.

We spent the night at a Salt "Hotel" near San Juan; entirely carved out of blocks of salt (including the picnic tables, and beds). In these remote Bolivian communities, electricity is a rarity, and only available from 7:00 to 10:00pm. We were told that showering wasn't going to be an option during the 4-day tour, so when we were offered hot showers for 10BS (about $1.50... expensive for here) we leapt on the opportunity.

The next morning was Lisa's 23rd birthday. We woke up at 5:30, packed our bags and gear back on top of the jeep, and enjoyed white breakfast bundt cake, complete with a candle in the center! We left the salt flats (driving past many vicuna along the way) and the scenery changed remarkably.

There aren't any real roads through the Bolivian desert, but it was navigable by Jeep. We stopped in a remote community to buy some wine and snacks, and played a little football with the local kids.

We were very close to the Chilean and Argenitian borders at this point, and passed through a couple military community check points. Volcanoes, smaller salt flats, llamas and vicunas were regular sightings from the Jeep.

We stopped to observe one of the only active volcanoes in the region. If you look closely, you can see a small puff of smoke coming out the left side of the volcano below.

After being cramped up in the Jeep for hours, we felt some mid-morning stretches were necessary.

In the afternoon we saw many colorful lagoons: Laguna Canapa, Laguna Hedionda, Laguna Charcota, Laguna Honda, Laguna Ramaditas and Laguna Colorada.

Each lagoon was a unique color, and most were home to huge flocks of flamingos; one of the only species able to survive in the salty, inhospitable landscape. We saw three different species of flamingo.

In all, we probably spent about 8 or 10 hours in the Jeep, but with great company, great tunes, and great landscapes, the time flew by. Our last stop of the day was some seemingly out of place rock formations in the middle of the desert which were shaped by winds and blowing sand.

They provided some absolutely incredible bouldering (rock-climbing) opportunities and we all climbed around on the rocks for far longer than our driver and guide would probably have liked.

All in all, there were probably about 100 rocks formations, many as large as 2 or 3-story houses. The most famous of the rock formations was the Arbol de Piedra ("Tree of Rock").

That night we sipped wine, ate Bolivian food, and played cards... all while well bundled up at 4300 meters (quite chilly!). A pretty great way to spend a birthday!

On day 3, we woke up early again visisted geysers, thermal pools, and some natural hot springs (where we bravely took a dip at 7:00am). It stunk like sulphur, and the stinky mist covered us all.

After breakfast, it was a long day in Jeep, but the scenery was extraordinary, and we sang (much to the amusement of our guide and driver) pretty much the whole way (all the good stuff: Journey, Kelly Clarkson, good Canadian country, 90's one-hit wonders... too many to name).

The mountain range below is actually on the border between Bolivia and Chile.

Later in the day we stopped at Laguna Verde ("Green Lagoon"); one of the most famous lagoons in Bolivia. Unfortunately, it wasn't very green when we were there... apparently it changes throughout the day, depending on the sun. We had a good stretch, and made some rock towers instead.  

The volcano behind Laguna Verde is a popular climbing destination. It's steady grade makes it easier than other volcanoes in the region. With binoculars you could see people climbing in the distance. The climb takes 8 hours up, and 3 down (due to the high altitude.. over 6000 meters above sea level).

We got really lucky at one lagoon, and spotted vicuna and flamingos in the same area... perfect photo opportunity! The white in the background is salt.

The scenery changed once again as we lost elevation.

We stopped for lunch in a small community, and played soccer with the local kids. They were facinated by the camera, and enjoyed chatting to us (although we didn't understand everything they were saying). They were telling us they had "Yamitas" in the house... which we later found out were "Llamitas", a.k.a. baby llamas.

As the Jeep slowly crawled up the hill on the other side of the valley, we saw a large dust-devil/ mini tornado going dangerously close to the town soon after we left.

Our last stop of the day was a abandonned town. It was destroyed by the Spanish about 300 years ago, and most of the inhabitants moved down the valley to another small town (whose name we forget) where we ended up spending the night.

We saw many of these rabbit/chinchila-like creatures running around the ruins. We'll have to double check, but we believe they are called Viscachas. Later, we found them on a menu in Potosi and bravely ordered them in a spicy sauce. It was quite good, although a bit difficult to pick all the meat off the bones!

At our accomodations that night, we stayed in a bedroom so full of beds you could barely get around. You had choice between a rock hard bed, and one which was all springs and no padding. We were tired though, we slept fine. 

The woman whose house the accomodations were in was blind, but you'd never know it. She raised llamas and other animals (pictured below with our guide Archie).

On our very last day of the tour, we tried to see some wild ostrich, but were unsuccessful. Instead, our guide stopped at an abandoned copper mine and let us wander around (you'd NEVER get to do this in Canada). It was really interesting. The blue mineral in the rocks is the unrefined copper.  

We stopped in another small village for lunch, and some local children brought out a brand new baby goat for us to hold.

We saw a brand new baby llama and it's mother, and vultures soaring around looking for the afterbirth.

We began our descent into Tupiza, known as red-rock country due to the iron deposits. This is where Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid supposedly met their fate.

 

Below is the valley of the moon, just outside of Tupiza. Erosion created the spindly rock spires you can see below.

We ended our trip in Tupiza. Another great South American adventure!