Raining and cold!
Trip Start
Aug 17, 2009
1
22
55
Trip End
Jul 15, 2010
Where I stayed
Hostel Marie Victoria
Potosi, Bolivia
Saturday, January 23, 2010
We took a local bus out to the Laguna Thermal on the Sunday. We had to trek for a bit to get up to it but it was so worth it when we got there. The lake was about thirty five degrees right in the centre and about thirty four or thirty three around the sides. It was gorgeous. Right out in the open with mountains on either side, it was so picturesque. We were quite the gawking site for one local family who were there too (for their monthly wash as Brian so kindly put it). Three of the sons came over to us to just stare, not to have a chat or ask us how we were or anything, just to stare. Nice of them eh?
We got back to the town warm right into our bones and got soup and a sandwich in one of the little coffee shops. Soup and a sandwich, thatīs when you know itīs really cold outside. Brian wasnīt feeling well that evening and went to bed at five. He didnīt get up until the following morning and still wasnīt feeling a hundred percent. Maybe the altitude caught up on him.
We went on a mine tour that day. Words cannot express how horrendous that tour was. We were collected at the hostal and driven up to the tiptop of the town. There we bought coca leaves, cigarettes and pop for the miners. We were decked out in wellies and waterproof/mudproof jackets and pants. They gave us helmets and a torch that clipped on to the helmet. The mines area is a cooperative with each miner taking what he mines and selling it for his own profit. Boys go in from the age of nine or ten and work as an apprentice to one of the older men. They work like that for two years and then move up the ladder a bit and begin mining themselves, still giving a percentage of what they find to their īmasterī. After another couple of years they become a fully fledged miner and can sell whatever they find. The working conditions are just horrendous. I really cannot express how awful they are. The miners have to walk miles into the middle of the mine, where all the ore is found. In there the temperature ranges from thirty three to thirty five degrees. Can you imagine trying to work in that heat? The fumes are so bad down there that many of the men donīt reach the age of thirty five. They get silicosis pneumonia (??) of the lungs but the money that they make is worth the short life span...apparently. Everyone was coughing and spluttering even before weīd reached the centre. A fully fledged miner can earn more than a doctor, a lawyer or a college professor and for many families there is no other option. The men donīt get a lunch break so can spend up to eight hours a day minimum in these conditions. They chew coca leaves to help with the altitude, the temperature and the hunger pangs. We were told that one miner can chew through up to sixty grams of coca leaves in one day. They were all going around with big bulges in their cheeks and as we entered the mine or met some of them along the way the first thing they asked for was coca leaves. We were about two hours in the mines and it was more than enough. Brian and I didnīt go right into the centre, he wasnīt feeling to great and I was freaking out slightly at the thought of being so deep in the ground with no natural light. We turned off our torches at one stage and Iīve never known darkness like it. Our eyes couldnīt even come close to adjustng. Not even close. It was horrific. I was never so glad to see daylight when we eventually got out. We were drained both physically and mentally coming out. Horrendous.
The following day we got a bus to Uyuni. We left Potosi and it was still raining.
