We left La Paz on an overnight bus headed to Sucre, the nation's capital. The travel agent told us he had booked upon 'the best' full cama (meaning seats that fully recline) bus company available and we were happy to pay a little extra for the comfort.
Well, I won't bore you with the details other than to say the windows were drafty, making it not only a strange night but very cold night. If this was the best choice, i would hate see what the other buses were like. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America and it shows in the transportation and the road conditions.
The good thing is Sucre is in a valley and this is the lowest in altitude and the warmest we have been since Cusco. The Cholitas wear slightly shorter skirts here and hats that are either made of straw or resemble a small cowboy hat. The town was pretty enough and as we set out to explore the sights we discovered that it was some kind of impromptu holiday and most everything was closed. We had a leisurely lunch and started chatting with a couple and their three children who are traveling around South America in their car. And wouldn't you know it, they're from Odense, Denmark. We spent most of the afternoon exchanging stories of our travels and soon became fast friends promising to visit each other when we get home again.
So, the last few days Jens has been confused about which country and city we are in. I know with all our travelling it is difficult to keep track and I myself was often saying we were in Lima when I meant to say we were in Peru. But both are four letter words ending in a vowel, so you can understand how I could get them mixed up. It's a little harder to explain how Jens could post on Facebook today that we were in Columbia. We haven't been there since last April! It must be all the extra oxygen his brain is getting at these lower altitudes.
The next day we visited the textile museum and were properly impressed with their fine art of weaving with complicated designs dating back centuries. We ambled through town, picked up a lunch to go at a cafe and headed to the bus station. Now it's back to higher altitude and cold once again.
POTOSI
We arrived to Potosi late yesterday afternoon after a three hour bus trip which took us through valleys then climbed up to some highland pastures at around 3,300 meters before reaching our destination at 4,100 meters. Lucky for us the sun came out for a last hurrah and we have a beautiful sunny day today. Potosi is famous for its silver mine which is still in operation today although the mother lode has long been extracted, some 45,000 tonnes most of which found its way to Spain.
The mining now is much more difficult and the veins of silver smaller and fewer. The extraction is still all done by hand, the conditions are horrific and the life expectancy of a miner is somewhere around mid-40's. We saw a boy of 10 years working in the mine today with his father. He was preparing the dynamite, which you can buy in a local shop by the way, along with ammonium nitrate, fuses and detonators.
The miners work in a cooperative so they benefit from what is extracted which is now mostly zinc, lead and tin. They all get into mining because it pays more than working in the city. Our tour guide was an ex-miner who worked for 20 years before realizing he was not going to be one of the lucky ones to strike it rich. They are a very superstitious people and have statues of the devil god Tata Kajchu underground and give offerings to him and to Pachamama (Earth Mother). As we were sitting in an alcove underground listening to our guide, Wilson's stories, we heard and felt several blasts of dynamite going off. Seeing that the safety measures in this mine were non-existent, it was a really scary feeling and it was all I could do to stop myself from running out of there as fast as I could. The only thing stopping me is I was afraid I would get lost.
It was a heck of an experience. Shocking to see that they work without safety goggles, masks, boots or even gloves. There seems to be no order or structure when it comes to blasting and despite all this, we were told that only 12 miners died in the mines last year.
I won't ever take for granted the luxuries we have at home after this and I doubt I'll go down into another mine either.
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