Wednesday, Jun 30th: Ain't no friend of mine

The main attraction of Potosí is Cerro Rico, a mountain that housed some of the richest silver veins in this world´s history and claimed the lives of countless coca-chewing indigenous slaves. Nowadays the mine yields hardly anything anymore: 100 ton of material dragged out of the mountain yields only 1 ton of minerals. Part of that is pyrite, known as fools gold, worth two times nothing. I´m curious to experience the mining tour, I hope it will give me an idea of the life miners had in Bolivia as well as in Belgium. Blandine will not join me on this tour, she´s not going to pay to crawl into tiny dark spaces.

It´s early and tonight it has frozen, so I´m warmly dressed. It´s only 8:30, but I find myself on a bus with 5 equally excited tourists: two German girls travelling together, two really friendly Canadian girls, and a Japanese guy who is also very excited, in a Japanese way: he smiles nervously when you ask him questions. Once we have our mining overalls, hard hats with lights, and rubber boots on, we´re off to the miniers market. Here we buy dynamite, coca leaves and lemonade to give to independent miners. I let the Japanese guy buy the lemonade and buy the dynamite myself, because really, how many times in your life do you come out of a store with a bag full of dynamite? We´ll even get to blow some up ourselves (I´ve got the video to prove it, muhahahaha)!

I walk into the mine singing "Got a one way ticket, one way ticket to the mine", while holding the stick of dynamite I just bought. It´s Belgian humour not appreciated by the Canadian girls in front of me, exactly the kind of stuff that puts a smile on my face. The tour itself is breathtaking, literally. We´re at almost 4800 metres and within minutes of going into one of the mine shafts the temperature rises uncomfortably to 30C. Being 2 metres tall doesn´t help either: the whole time in the mine I cannot properly stand up, and I must duck for pipes that transport pressurised air for the power drills used by the big companies.

The statue of Tío, the god of the miners is our first stop. He´s in an tunnel that requires some crawling, about 10 minutes after entering the mine, but only 4 of us go greet him: One of the German girls is not feeling great and so is one of the Canadian girls. They head back out of the mine in search of fresh air. We crawl to the statue and offer him some coca leaves for good luck. I´ve gotten used to the heat, the dark and the lack of oxygen, but things are about to get worse. On the way to an independent miner the mine shafts get smaller and we must crawl on all fours over wooden support beams. There´s dust everywhere, that´s why we´re wearing a cover over our mouth, but breathing gets so difficult that I have to remove it to get enough oxygen in my lungs.

It´s a family affair
The group finally reaches the independent miner. He crawls backwards out of a hole that´s just big enough for his own body, covered in beads of sweat. We crawl to the area where he relaxes with his 14 year-old son. The kids isn´t going to school, because dad needs him to help out in the mine, that saves having to hire a person against payment. In the rest area, father and son drink from the soda bottles we offer them, then dad pops in a new ball of coca leaves to suppress hunger and sleep. In the days of Spanish conolisation slaves were forced to chew coca so they could work up to 24 hours without food our drink, luckily those days are over. The Spanish have gone, but it´s the lack of mnerals that´s pushing miners to stay in the mine longer now. They only get paid for the minierals they bring out. I feel sick about this situation. The life of this kid is like the soda bottle he´s drinking. Soon it will be empty, and lay on the bottom of a mine shaft, crushed flat and covered with dust. Miners aren´t ecologists, they don´t bring their trash back out of the mine, but I can´t blame them, and nobody´s going to do anything about it any time soon. Time to climb, crawl, do whatever necessary to get out of this place. It takes ages to see the sunlight again, 25 minutes to be more precise.

When I come out of the mine, I´m panting heavily, I´ll never be a miner. The whole experience was physically tiring, but even heavier on the mental front. The removal of the dust cover from my mouth has cost me as well: my vocal cords are covered with so much dust that I sound like Darth Vader. Could I impress young girls with this voice? yes. Do I feel great? Absolutely not. Within a matter of a few hours of being underground I feel the toll of being in a mine already seriously. I consider what 20 years in this hell hole would do to me, then, before I come to a conclusion, the tour leader announces we´re going to blow up the remaining stick of dynamite. Cool! After seeing Alfred Nobel´s invention in action we head back to the hotel. It´s been a really draining morning.

Pottering around in Potosí
I run into Blandine in the afternoon, so we have lunch together, then walk around the center of Potosí, a far cry fro the cruelties that have been going on four centuries inside the mountain that dominates it´s view. The mint is nearby, but neither of us is really willing to spend the next few hours looking at inanimate objects behind glass cases for the next few hours. We spend the rest of the afternoon taking snaps of the city centre, then have a simple dinner and watch a movie in our room.