Sucre & Potosi - Dinosaurs, Mines and Dynamite!

After leaving Cochabamba my journey took me on a couple of whistlestop tours of Sucre & Potosi before heading to Uyuni.

Sucre

I only stayed a day hear but it was a fun time. I left Cochabamba expecting a 10 hour trip, however, that turned in to 16 hours. A crash on the road and a problem with the bus turned it in to one of the slowest trips I have ever been on. Some of the buses in Bolivia are terrible, it's a mentalitiy of getting everything you can out of something until it falls apart. Then you might think about doing something about it.

I got to Sucre around mid day and spent the afternoon looking around and visiting a couple of museums. Sucre is the judicial capital of Bolivia while La Paz is the home of the government. Bolivian independance from Spain was achieved in 1809 in Sucre. The city is very tranquil and quite picturesque with white washed buildings and nice plazas in a setting surrounded by hills and mountains. In the evening I had a good meal and a few drinks with some people I had met in the hostel I was staying in.

In the morning I went with Jack (an Aussie I met the day before) to a viewing point that looks across the city. It was a lovely blue sunny day and we had a great view of the city and landscape. At the view point there is a cafe set in some gardens and we stayed there to have some brunch. I had toasted bread with olive oil, olives, cheese and a glass of passionfruit, banana, apple and lemon. The plentyfulness and cheapness of fruit in Bolivia is one of its plus points. Laying back above the city with great food and drink I had one of those 'I love that I am here' moments.

Brunch in the sun

After the meal I headed to the nearby Cretacious Park to see some 56 million year old dinosaur footprints. In the park you can see the tracks of eight different species of dinosaur. Unfortunately it has become unsafe to get close to them so you have to view them from a vantage point 300m away. The tracks are on the side of a 80 degree vertical cliff in a cement quarry. This comes from the time when the tectonic plates moved, forcing the land upwards and creating the mountain ranges of the Andes.

Dino prints

After the dino park there wasn't a lot left to do so I decided to push on to Potosi that night.

Potosi

In Winchester 150 pence can buy you a 15 minute bus journey in to town. In Bolivia it can buy you a 3 hour bus journey from Sucre to Potosi. The highest city in the world at 4,070m asl and formerly one of the richest cities in the world (although the glory has long faded) it is a place worth seeing. Potosi become rich around the 1550s when silver was found in its mountains. The city funded the Spanish economy for a long time (and some of Englands courtesy of Sir Frances Drake) and the Cerro Rico mountain is still mined to this day. Silver stopped being mined in the 20th century when its price fell and instead tin was mined. Now little is left of either and the minerals are mined by chemically extracting them from the rocks that contain them. I was in Potosi to take a tour of the mine and see it for myself.

The crew (I'm in the middle)

Our guide was an ex miner who had worked for three years in the mines. He spoke great English and was a really funny guy. Our first stop was to get suited and booted in our mining gear and hard hats. Then it was a trip to the Miners Market. As a gift to the miners you are encouraged to buy them some provisions for the mine. For 30 Bs (2 pounds) we purchased them some dynamite and some bottles of juice (we could have bought them pure alcohol for their Friday celebrations but thought better of it)! Next it was off to the mine. A small entrance led in to even smaller passage ways and then crawling spaces on hands and knees. In the mine our guide told us the shocking truth and tales of the mine...

What to buy...explosives, 96% alcohol for the Friday party, water or juice?

The miners will work 8 hours a day, 6 days a week to earn themselves 2,500 Bs (250 pounds). To help with 8 hours in the mine with no food each miner will consume 3 bags of coca leaves a day. They work as a cooperative and get to take home about 86% in wages of what they extract. After working for around 10 years in the mine a lot of the miners will contract Silicosis (lung cancer) and may only live for another 5-10 years. It is the dust in the mine that causes this and the miners do not wear proper masks due to the cost of the filters and the unpracticality of wearing them. Now electric winches haul up the extracted rock but when our guide worked there he could be carrying up to 45kg of rock up tiny passages to the carts. Around 12,000 people still work in the mines and an estimated 1000 of these are children from the age of 10-18. This is illegal but this is Bolivia and there's just no controls. A child working from the age of 10 could have a life expectancy of just 25-30 years due to the Silicosis. The provision of few other jobs in Potosi and the need to support the family are the main reasons they work.

Working down mine

The miners believe in the underworld and that the mines are the domain of the devils. In order to have good luck they give offerings of dead llama foetus' to effiges of the devil in the mine.

A few people have become rich from the mines. One of the last was a man in 1985 who apparently did a deal with the devil by not just giving llama foetus' but also atleast one human foetus as a more powerful offering! He then struck it rich when he hit one of the main tin veins in the mountain and overnight his fortunes changed. He invested in 10 buses for the miners (a first in Potosi) and for a couple of years life was good. However he had forgotten about the devil and his pact. Three of his buses has accidents leading to the death of workers and he lost everything due to the welfare payments he had to make! Apparently he now makes a living charging people a lot of money to tell their fortunes from reading Coca leaves!

We went further in to the mine but stopped when we came across miners excavating the passage ahead. Apparently there had been a cave in which happened over Carnival. The miners were having to clear the block so that actual mining could begin again on Monday. We turned around to leave but before exiting it was time to visit one of the devil idols ,which, had also been decorated for carnival!


Me n Mr Devil

Eventually no one will be able to mine there any longer due to the threat of collapse of the mountain. The increase in rainfall and the unstableness of its tunnel ridden inside is the cause but no one knows if it they have another 10 or 50 years to go.

Once outside again one of our guides starting turning a stick of dynamite in to a usable explosive. I was handed this thing before realising that the four minute fuse was already burning down! The guide then ran off with it and stuck it in the ground so we could watch the explosion. The sound and blast was pretty cool. This place was insane.

Explosive preparations...