Once a dominant, wealthy mining hub from all the silver removed from Cerro Rico, Potosí remains one of the highest cities in the world. Some say it’s the highest. Tourists flock the mines for a humbling experience. Despite my attitude towards tour culture and the unsettling feeling of making someone’s hardship an attraction to visit, I loved it.

 

 

Getting There

Marcela and I took a bus from Sucre, 4 hours, $3.50. They leave frequently and no need to book in advance. Buses conveniently connect to Uyuni, where you’ll find the largest salt flat on earth, $4.40.

Accomodation

Koala Den was recommended to us, an amazing choice. Our room was five flights of stairs above the lobby but I didn’t even care. Great wifi, PCs, hot showers. They organize a well-done mine tour twice a day for $17.40.

Complete family/restaurant-style breakfast was included, during which guests exchange stories and itinerary tips while reaching for rolls or pineapple slices and the house mom comes around with platters of eggs, pancakes, juice, and hot chocolate. This daily chaos (which I loved) intensifies towards the end of the meal when the mine tour guides show up and start yelling to get ready and pay up, while everyone has yet to check out because they said eat first and bag storage is locked because the house mom is literally losing her wits in the kitchen.

 

 

See and Do

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, more than 45,000 tons were shipped to Spain, enough to construct a bridge between Bolivia in Spain. A fifth of that directly goes to the royal family.

Meanwhile, the Bolivian miners dealt with one of the toughest jobs on earth; every task is carried out manually. They ohad o stay inside the mines for nearly three months at a time. Today, shifts are still brutal—20 hours long and often resulting in getting trapped by collapsing rock. Life expectancy is significantly shortened with prevalence of lung diseases secondary to chronic exposure to suffocating amounts of dust and debris.

 

 

Day 78 (pm)

The Potosí terminal was big, empty, and far away from town. Feeling the 4,090 meters on our lungs, we hopped in a micro and got off when maps.me showed us we were blocks from the hostel.

Our night was cut short when I had the most awful stomach cramp. It took everything out of me to wait hours for ten photos to upload on this blog.

Marcela had been in bed since we checked in. I ran into the room yelling in pain and asking she was alive, confirming she had in fact not died from potential CO poisoning or something absurd due to me having turned off a mysterious switch on the heater earlier. I couldn’t move. She sang to me to sleep.

 

Day 79

We followed our guides from the epileptic meal described above to a van containing tourists from other hostels.

At a warehouse we changed into miners gear and split into groups of five. Our leader Daniel, exactly who Matt from Sucre had told us to ask for, donned our group The Sex Machines.

Coincidentally all of us lived in the United States. Mary was originally from Bolivia and was traveling with her family-friend/possible significant other, Matt from Chicago. They were so positive and pleasant. Then there was Raj, a mildly awkward Indian American working for a startup with great photography skills and a claustrophobic wife waiting back in a hotel room.

The next stop was the “Miner’s Market,” or a couple streetside shops lucky enough to be endorsed by these tours. We were encouraged to buy gifts (~$2) for the mine workers; nobody doesn’t pitch in something. Although there were dynamite sticks, alcohol potable, and snacks, the miners understandably prefer juice. It made me sad that it looked like the equivalent of Hawaiian Punch, just another reminder that the poor in South America run on zero nutrition.

Just up the hill were ladies selling copious amounts of coca leaves. You’re supposed to chew them one at a time, not by the handful as gringos tend to, looking like llamas. What really interested The Sex Machines, though, were the nearby fried chicken and potato empanadas.

We piled back in the bus and happily ascended Cerro Rico. There were 170 active mines; different tours visit different ones. We alighted to the thundering of minecarts exiting the mountain.

And then we were inside, choking on dust for the next two hours. Marcela overcame her fear.

Workers chiseled at veins of silver. The effort was grueling. They could only mine within the sections they had paid for. Daniel instructed us in avoiding high-speed carts, walking across narrow planks, and shimmying down wooden ladders with missing rungs. We ducked from not only the ceiling, but also all the wires hanging (or falling?) from it.

Definitely recommended for anyone without claustrophobia. M’s humanitarian act of the day was giving the rest of our water to a miner desperately yelling “agua.”

The only appetizing thing at lunch was the salteña and all its juices. Biting into it was the official beginning of Marcela’s addiction. The soup was more gelatin than anything else.

We got to video call my best friend Katie. I missed her every day.

A taxi took us to the ex terminal, $1.45, where we boarded a bus for Uyuni, $4.45.