Silver Mining in the Highest Town in the World

The group for the day
see all photos »

First stop off in Bolivia was the town of Potosi; the highest town in the world at an altitude of 4060 metres above sea level.

After a quick walking tour a few of us headed to the local market, making use of Bolivias extreme cheapness. The place is full of Alpacca shops and stall selling scarfs, hats, gloves and the like. Upon returning to the hotel it was obvious that not many of us could resist the prices of these goods!

Posted By Adam

The doll and its fuse
see all photos »

The following day we had our main excursion in Potosi, a trip to the working silver mines of Cerro Rico. We were picked up by our guide and taken to a small backstreet room to get changed into our yellow suits. From there we headed to the Miners markets where we were encouraged to buy the miners gifts such as soft drinks and Coco Leaves. We each chipped in and bought them the pressents but could not leave the market without buying some dynamite.

The miners buy the dynamite themselves, or rely on gifts from the likes of us so it was easy to buy there. We were told we would have the chance to blow it up up on the mountain before we entered the mines so we thought it was necessary to buy something to explode. Enter the biggest pumpkin we could find and a girls doll.

Down in the mines
see all photos »

After a winding coach journey to the top of the mountain our guide packed the pumpkin and doll with dynamite and ammonium nitrate. We propped up the two bombs on some rocks and hurried back up the mountain to avoid the explosion.

After all enjoying that we put on our face masks and entered the mines. Originally the mine was a hugely succesful Silver mine, and the whole reason the town exists there today. Now however it is largely used for Zinc and other minerals.

It was quite an experience...to be able to see miners in those conditions; conditions that we were a bit surprised people still work in these days. We climbed through the small openings and avoided large drops in the ground to work our way through the network of mines, speaking to miners as we passed an dgiving them the Coco Leaves we bought earlier. The tour guide talked us through the history and introduced us to the miners, giving us about three hours in the mountain in total. As we walked through we could clearly hear more dynamite explosions going off as the workers did their job.

Three hours was enough really and we were happy to get out of there in the end but equally glad to have seen what we had just seen.

Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/3menandalittlelady/sets/72157600572782428/