We arrived in Asuncion in desperate need of a bed and a shower. Luckily, the bus attendant we had befriended during hellish border experience was from the area and walked us to a nearby hotel, and even helped us to negotiate the cheapest rate in town. We ended up in a room with a rambunctious Irishman and a bizarre Swede. After taking a much-needed nap, we decided to check out the town. Little did we know, all of downtown Asuncion shuts down on Sunday. We walked the deserted streets for a solid hour searching for some kind, any kind of open restaurant, finally finding some mediocre burgers.
Later on that evening, we met up with our friend Camilo, our Paraguayan friend whom we know from Virginia. He took us around the Asuncion bar scene, which we discovered is pretty laidback, well, pretty much dead, on Sunday nights. It was great to see one of our Charlottesville friends after such a long time away from home! We agreed to go sightseeing around Paraguay during the week, but to make our way back to Asuncion in time for the weekend. So, the next morning, we drudgingly packed up our bags to hop on a bus to Encarnacion with our new crazy Irish friend, Alan.
Encarnacion is a relatively large city in Paraguay right on the Argentine border. It is Paraguay´s prime tourist destination because of it´s close proximity to the Jesuit reducciones, or missions. The Jesuits came to the Southern cone of South America to ¨convert the heathens¨and save their souls. While they were certainly guilty of their fair share of colonial abuses, they are famous for their efforts to educate the indigenous peoples. Eventually, the Spanish crown kicked them out because they had grown too influential in the colonies. This sparked mass uprising, but the rebels did not succeed in reinstating the Jesuits. Instead, their massive settlements remained abandonded…of course, these ruins have been converted into a tourist attraction. Paraguay´s Jesuit missions are among the world´s least-visited UNESCO sights. We spent the day hitching and exploring the various sights. Due to a near total lack of public transportation, there weren´t any other tourists at the ruins. This meant we got to climb all over the reunions, conducting various fake religious ceremonies and taking goofy pictures. Score!
The next day we hopped on another 6 hour bus to Ciudad del Este. For the first time since our arrival in Paraguay, our bus was no more than 1 hour late! We found this absolutely thrilling. Upon arrival in Ciudad del Este, we were struck by the poverty in which the majority of people lived in there.
We´re going to the airport soon to go to Mexico for Tori´s cousin´s wedding but will finish updating the blog soon.
xoxo,
see you soon.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Che Guevara and the Chaco Crossing
We last posted while waiting in the bus station in Potosi. Stew had a fever and we were feeling short on time, so we decided to skip our planned activities and went directly to the bus terminal. We waited seven hours for our 20 ish hour ride to begin, which was probably the worst of the trip. Thankfully two weeks has lessened the memory of that awful ride (which highlighted in being dumped at a bus terminal at 5 in the morning in our shorts and informed that the word ¨direct¨meant ¨not in any way direct and you´re all screwed til another bus shows up in a few hours when we open.¨
Eventually, we got to Santa Cruz, the largest city in Bolivia. The climate is much more like Central America: hot, muggy, and beautiful skies. It was nice to be in a place with palm trees and fruit trees everywhere, but the town is basically boring. We did manage to get our Paraguayan visas with complete ease: we showed up, filled an application, deposited money in their account, and returned in three hours for the visas. After a quite mediocre art museum, there was nothing else to do in the town, so Tori was forced to go clothes shopping.
The next morning, we hopped on a local bus to Valle Grande. It is a town of about 6,000 people in an incredibly remote part of Bolivia. It is only 200 kilometers from Santa Cruz but takes between 6-8 hours in bus. There is even less to do here than in Santa Cruz, but it is an important historical site. Che´s body was brought here after he was executed in a small schoolhouse in La Higuera. The photos that went out to newspapers confirming his death were taken in the laundry room of the hospital before they took his body (and those of his comrades) and buried in them in unmarked mass graves. These were later found underneath the runway of the local ¨airport,¨ which is still unpaved. There is also a monument to Che which is somewhat ironically closed to the public and you have to pay $50 for a tour. Alternatively, you can pull up the chain link fence and sneak in...
Pretty much everyone in Valle Grande wants to sell a tour to La Higuera because there is no public transport there. After being disgusted with the prices people were trying to extract for the 35 kilometer journey, we split a taxi with two indigenous ladies for about 1/10 of the price. We assumed people were lying when they said the trip lasts 3 hours and that they were just trying to justify their prices. It actually takes 3 hours because the roads are so bad. Actually, we had to get out and walk along side our cab for a while because the road was impassable with our weight.
La Higuera is a tiny tiny village of about 5-10 families. There is a hotel, but the person who runs it was gone. Lodging and food were provided by the wives of the farmers. They all came up to us and tried to convince us to stay or eat with them because we were the only visitors. We ended up lodging in the school house along with the visiting Cuban doctor (part of the MercoSur alliances ´ ¨oil for doctors¨ program with Cuba). This got weird in the morning when there were children playing soccer while we were brushing our teeth. The main activities in La Higuera (possibly the only activities) are hiking to La Quebrada del Churo or Churo´s Ravine and visiting the old schoolhouse. The schoolhouse is just a plain concrete room about the size of a college dorm room but completely decorated with relics from Che´s life and various homages to the revolutionary. The ravine where Che was captured is a beautiful hike through pastures, rivers, and forests. We visitied the house of the old lady who fed the band and put them up for their last night. It would have been too small for even Tori to stand up in.
It took a full day of travel to get back to Santa Cruz: 3 hour taxi, 1 hour wait for the bus, 8 hours in the bus. We were too exhausted to get on the bus to Asuncion, so we had to spent all of the next day waiting. There really is nothing to do in Santa Cruz, so we stocked up on groceries and read in the park. Not really a bad way to spend a day. We were really glad we had bought so many snacks when we got to Paraguay, too.
Leaving Bolivia was more difficult than we expected. At 4 in the morning, we get kicked off the bus to go through immigration. We had left in 90 degree weather and it was now about 40, so our clothing was a little inappropriate. The guard starts calling out nationalities and telling them to get back on the bus. Ours is not one of them, but fortunately we´re at the front of the line. Stew gives him the passport and starts screaming ¨Are you from the American government?¨Stew was a little confused and thought ¨yes, we are associated with the U.S. Government....we´re citizens.¨ This was wrong and the guy started screaming ¨CIA! SPIES!¨ This is not a good way to wake up. He demanded all of the receipts and proof of our actions while in Bolivia. No one had told us this would be necessary, so we were a little confused. We didn´t have any receipts and couldn´t think of any way to get them either. Fortunately, Tori had the WIFI password written on the back of a piece of scrap paper that happened to have the name of a hotel. This, ridiculously, convinced the roided bureaucrat that he had done his job and he let us pass.
5 hours later we get to the Paraguayan side of the border. Does that confuse anyone else? I lost lines had no width. We unloaded again and put all our luggage in a line for the dogs to sniff. They were not interested in our bags at all, which we´re sure contain interesting smells. Everyone´s bags were fine and we all got back on our bus. And then we waited. And waited. And ate lunch...and waited. Eventually, someone told us that there were people on our bus with drugs and we had to wait for them. They had swallowed cocaine and the cops had to get it out of them. Finally, we go again, but stop five minutes later outside of the main immigration office where soldiers come and take all of the Bolivians off the bus and check everyone´s passports again. Hours pass and people start coming out and getting hand cuffed to the police trucks. 12 people have been taken from our bus and seven from the bus next to us. A woman that works at the Bolivian consulate in Paraguay is on the bus and starts taking the information for the prisoners to send to their families. Apparently they had each swallowed 300 grams of cocaine and were ratting each other out. One guy had looked nervous and his eyes were really red so that tipped off the authorities and they had x-rayed all of the Bolivians. One rich Bolivian got interrogated much more harshly because he didn´t have any coke and they thought he was the ringleader. He came back looking horribly shaken with two black eyes and a fierce temper. The Brazilian transvestite never came back. Finally, after 12 hours, they put all of the prisoners back on the bus and we all drove together to the jail with soldiers pointing their machine guns at the handcuffed people. We didn´t get dinner or breakfast, and our trip went from an estimated 18-20 hours to an actual 36 hours. Fortunately, we made friends with Alan from Ireland and Viktor from Sweden who entertained us.
Eventually, we got to Santa Cruz, the largest city in Bolivia. The climate is much more like Central America: hot, muggy, and beautiful skies. It was nice to be in a place with palm trees and fruit trees everywhere, but the town is basically boring. We did manage to get our Paraguayan visas with complete ease: we showed up, filled an application, deposited money in their account, and returned in three hours for the visas. After a quite mediocre art museum, there was nothing else to do in the town, so Tori was forced to go clothes shopping.
The next morning, we hopped on a local bus to Valle Grande. It is a town of about 6,000 people in an incredibly remote part of Bolivia. It is only 200 kilometers from Santa Cruz but takes between 6-8 hours in bus. There is even less to do here than in Santa Cruz, but it is an important historical site. Che´s body was brought here after he was executed in a small schoolhouse in La Higuera. The photos that went out to newspapers confirming his death were taken in the laundry room of the hospital before they took his body (and those of his comrades) and buried in them in unmarked mass graves. These were later found underneath the runway of the local ¨airport,¨ which is still unpaved. There is also a monument to Che which is somewhat ironically closed to the public and you have to pay $50 for a tour. Alternatively, you can pull up the chain link fence and sneak in...
Pretty much everyone in Valle Grande wants to sell a tour to La Higuera because there is no public transport there. After being disgusted with the prices people were trying to extract for the 35 kilometer journey, we split a taxi with two indigenous ladies for about 1/10 of the price. We assumed people were lying when they said the trip lasts 3 hours and that they were just trying to justify their prices. It actually takes 3 hours because the roads are so bad. Actually, we had to get out and walk along side our cab for a while because the road was impassable with our weight.
La Higuera is a tiny tiny village of about 5-10 families. There is a hotel, but the person who runs it was gone. Lodging and food were provided by the wives of the farmers. They all came up to us and tried to convince us to stay or eat with them because we were the only visitors. We ended up lodging in the school house along with the visiting Cuban doctor (part of the MercoSur alliances ´ ¨oil for doctors¨ program with Cuba). This got weird in the morning when there were children playing soccer while we were brushing our teeth. The main activities in La Higuera (possibly the only activities) are hiking to La Quebrada del Churo or Churo´s Ravine and visiting the old schoolhouse. The schoolhouse is just a plain concrete room about the size of a college dorm room but completely decorated with relics from Che´s life and various homages to the revolutionary. The ravine where Che was captured is a beautiful hike through pastures, rivers, and forests. We visitied the house of the old lady who fed the band and put them up for their last night. It would have been too small for even Tori to stand up in.
It took a full day of travel to get back to Santa Cruz: 3 hour taxi, 1 hour wait for the bus, 8 hours in the bus. We were too exhausted to get on the bus to Asuncion, so we had to spent all of the next day waiting. There really is nothing to do in Santa Cruz, so we stocked up on groceries and read in the park. Not really a bad way to spend a day. We were really glad we had bought so many snacks when we got to Paraguay, too.
Leaving Bolivia was more difficult than we expected. At 4 in the morning, we get kicked off the bus to go through immigration. We had left in 90 degree weather and it was now about 40, so our clothing was a little inappropriate. The guard starts calling out nationalities and telling them to get back on the bus. Ours is not one of them, but fortunately we´re at the front of the line. Stew gives him the passport and starts screaming ¨Are you from the American government?¨Stew was a little confused and thought ¨yes, we are associated with the U.S. Government....we´re citizens.¨ This was wrong and the guy started screaming ¨CIA! SPIES!¨ This is not a good way to wake up. He demanded all of the receipts and proof of our actions while in Bolivia. No one had told us this would be necessary, so we were a little confused. We didn´t have any receipts and couldn´t think of any way to get them either. Fortunately, Tori had the WIFI password written on the back of a piece of scrap paper that happened to have the name of a hotel. This, ridiculously, convinced the roided bureaucrat that he had done his job and he let us pass.
5 hours later we get to the Paraguayan side of the border. Does that confuse anyone else? I lost lines had no width. We unloaded again and put all our luggage in a line for the dogs to sniff. They were not interested in our bags at all, which we´re sure contain interesting smells. Everyone´s bags were fine and we all got back on our bus. And then we waited. And waited. And ate lunch...and waited. Eventually, someone told us that there were people on our bus with drugs and we had to wait for them. They had swallowed cocaine and the cops had to get it out of them. Finally, we go again, but stop five minutes later outside of the main immigration office where soldiers come and take all of the Bolivians off the bus and check everyone´s passports again. Hours pass and people start coming out and getting hand cuffed to the police trucks. 12 people have been taken from our bus and seven from the bus next to us. A woman that works at the Bolivian consulate in Paraguay is on the bus and starts taking the information for the prisoners to send to their families. Apparently they had each swallowed 300 grams of cocaine and were ratting each other out. One guy had looked nervous and his eyes were really red so that tipped off the authorities and they had x-rayed all of the Bolivians. One rich Bolivian got interrogated much more harshly because he didn´t have any coke and they thought he was the ringleader. He came back looking horribly shaken with two black eyes and a fierce temper. The Brazilian transvestite never came back. Finally, after 12 hours, they put all of the prisoners back on the bus and we all drove together to the jail with soldiers pointing their machine guns at the handcuffed people. We didn´t get dinner or breakfast, and our trip went from an estimated 18-20 hours to an actual 36 hours. Fortunately, we made friends with Alan from Ireland and Viktor from Sweden who entertained us.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Minerals on our mine
Pardon our complete and utter disregard for the space-time continuum here, but in our last post we somehow forgot to mention the fabulous CHOLITAS WRESTLING SPECTACULAR we attended in El Alto, a primarily indigenous suburb high in the mountains outside of La Paz -- before we went to Copacabana.
Fighting/wrestling is a tradition among Bolivian highland communities, where women and men duke it out in the ring for leadershop of their groups. The more blood spilled the better, as all that falls is seen as an offering to Pacha Mama, the mother earth deity. We thought we were going to see some traditional fighting, but it turned out that we saw the city-fied version of the traditional fights (read: WWF-style). First up was El Tigre and The Shocker, both in hilarious spandex outfits that we strongly suspect were made by their Mamas. Things only got better after this: ninjas and midgets joined the fray! There were also several girl on girl fights, and they all wore traditional bolivian dress. This means their skirts went flying up when they soared through the air. That´s right, huge throws were a big part of this wrestling extravaganza.
Another key component of the event was audience participation. When the crowd disapproved of the fighters´methods (ie: breaking a wooden crate over the head of a fighter who was down) they threw food and garbage at the fighters. The fighters responded in kind, spraying water and sprite, and throwing garbage back at the crowd. We were in the front row, so things got a little messy for us. It was sort of like a cafeteria food fight, with costumes and punching.
Now, back to the program:
We arrived in Uyuni early in the morning, but tour operators were open for business. We were hounded by about 10 different agencies, and finally chose the one that offered us free coffee. It was 7AM, freezing cold, and we had just spent the last two hours of our bus ride listening to a crying baby (Stew groggily woke up with the baby´s cries, and muttered ¨voy a comerlo¨). We decided to be an ambitious and book a tour for that very day, starting at 10:30 AM. Our time is running out, so despite our extreme tiredness (beyond the crying baby, the bus ride was so bumpy that sleep was pretty fitfull for the two of us for the entire trip), we decided to push on.
We showed up at the tour office in plenty of time, stopping for breakfast at a stand on the street that sold some of the most delicious chicken sandwiches we´ve ever had. It was basically an elderly woman and a table with a platter of whole chickens and half a pig, some raw onions and hot peppers, and some of the most delicious hot-bbqish sauce you´ve ever tasted. They were such awesome sandwiches, we had them again the next day.
The tour ended up starting late, and that would be a theme for the rest of the day. Despite waiting around at every stop for our driver or whatever member of the group was currently missing (Ahem, Tori), we managed to see it all. Our first stop was the train graveyard, where at least a hundred decommisioned trains were rusting in the desert. We got to climb all over them and take cool photos. It was basically hunks of metal in the middle of nowhere. Pretty cool. Next, it was off to the small salt refining town of Colchani, where nothing much was happening except a few people selling artesania. Luckily, Tori found the rainbow wool hat she has been lusting after for half the price as those in La Paz! Stew found dice made out of salt. We are hoping they survive the Virginia humidiy when we return, they are so cool.
After all this putzing around (we signed up for the tour for the salt, people), we finally made it to the salt flat. We stopped first at the very edge of the 4,086 square mile, 100 ft. deep salt flat. There is some table salt production at the edges, which basically involved shovelling the salt into small, pyramid-like mounds to dry, then sifting and crushing it. Next, it was on to the salt hotel. It is made from bricks of salt that have been compressed. All the furniture inside the hotel is also made of salt. It´s hard not to want to lick everything.
After the salt hotel, we took a long drive through the empty, barren plain of salt to a volcano in the middle of the salt flat. As we´re approaching the dry season, the salt had begun to crack and turn a stark white that contrasted sharply with the bright blue sky above. It looked like the moon. We stopped off at the volcano for lunch, at which point Tori got confused about where every went and ended up starting the climb up the volcano. It was an awesome view -- the salt flat extended as far as you could see in every direction. Unfortunately, this hike wasn´t actually in the protocol, and Stew and the guide were forced to come looking for her. Lunch ended up being about 2 hours late, though it wasn´t entirely Tori´s fault: two other group members got seriously lost, and we were waiting longer for them.
On our way to the next stop, Isla Incahuasi, we jumped out of the car and took some cool pictures. There is no sense of perspective on the salt flat because you don´t have any reference points, so you can take funny pictures where it looks like a toy dinosaur is life-size, and gobbling up Tori and Stew. We also took ones where it looks like we are sitting on mountains. Incahuasi was a little lackluster - a mound of cacti and rock in the middle of the salt flat - but it was still an awesome tour overall.
We eschewed the night bus to Potosi for safety reasons (yes, we do think of safety!), and jumped on a 10 AM bus the following morning. It was every bit as bumpy as the ride from La Paz to Uyuni, but this time we got to listen to modern takes on traditional Bolivian classics at full volume the whole way. We booked a tour of the famed mines of Potosi first thing, and then slowly strolled around the town -- at 13,420 ft, it´s difficult to do anything too fast.
Our tour of the mines began with a visit to the miners´market, the only place in the world where dynamite is widely and freely available. A twelve-year-old could walk up to any stand and load himself up with enough dynamite to take the whole mine out. This is necessary, because twelve-year-olds also work in the mines. Also for sale at the miners´market are coca leaves and fruit drinks, which we bought to give to the miners as gifts. The miners have to buy all of their own working supplies because there is no mining company in Potosi, instead it is basically a cooperative. Only members of the cooperative can hire their own employees, so profitsharing doesn´t really happen. As there is no company to finance modernization of extraction technologies, the only real improvement since the colonial era is dynamite.
The next step was to put on bright yellow plastic pants, jackets, boots, and helmets. Tori´s were so big on her she was tripping over them, but they fit Stew like saranwrap on a burrito. Makes sense- they were the same size. We then drove up another few hundred meters to the mine entrance, where we all had to duck to get in. We began winding our way through the dusty, cramped labyrinth, with our guide, a former miner, stopping at intervels to explain the support structures in the mine and the various mineral formations. Sometimes we had to run to get out of the way of oncoming carts filled with minerals. The carts were propelled by running miners, and had so much momentum that they couldn´t be stopped. We had one hairy situation in which one of our fellow tourists practically leaped into Tori´s arms on the side of the tunnel to evade the racing cart. The tunnels got more hot and it became more difficult to breathe as we journeyed further inward. This was due to an increase in chemicals in the air, specifically arsenic, and the absence of any form of ventilation.
We stopped for a talk at the Tio of the mine, or the miners´deity. He is called the Tio because when the Spanish arrived, the Incans could not pronounce the word ¨Dios¨, meaning God, and wound up with Tio. The Tio is a syncretic deity that looks an awful lot like the Catholic devil, horns and all. Given that the devil is the God of the underworld, the miners took him for their own. Whenever they come to work, they make an offering to the Tio of pure alcohol (96 percent pure hellfire known as Bolivian whisky), coca leaves, and cigarrettes. We made an offering of our own, which involved pouring a bit of the whisky on the ground and then taking two sips each. Our guide admonished us not to wince when drinking the liquor, or it would offend the Tio. This proved challenging, but somehow we smiled. At least we learned something in college.
After our visit to the Tio, we went deeper still and saw some actual digging at the veins. Stew took his hand with the shovel, but Tori wasn´t allowed. No women are allowed to work in the interior of the mines. Legend has it that the mountain (and all mountains) itself, Cerro Rico, is a woman, and that she will grow jealous and hide all of the minerals if a woman attempts to mine. It wasn´t until 20 years ago that women were allowed in as tourists. To be fair, the womens´lib movement should not bother fighting for the right to work this awful job. The work is punishing, as it entails heavy manual labor in a blistering hot, unventilated area around harmful chemicals and explosions. The average life expentancy after entering as a worker can be as low as seven years. Really, some kind of liberation movement for the workers´in the mines should be organized....but there isn´t really any other industry in Potosi, so we doubt that this will happen.
When we left the mines, we were taught how to use dynamite and got to blow up a tire! We mixed sodium nitrate (we think) with nitroglycerine (dynamite) and it went off way better than any roman candle we´ve seen. The tire went flying 200 meters in the air and landed high up on the side of the mountain.
Although the tour was, for the most part, physically and emotionally draining, we´re glad we did it.
Today we are off to Santa Cruz on a 20 hour bus ride. Thank God we have 2 ambien left.
Love,
Tori and Stew
Fighting/wrestling is a tradition among Bolivian highland communities, where women and men duke it out in the ring for leadershop of their groups. The more blood spilled the better, as all that falls is seen as an offering to Pacha Mama, the mother earth deity. We thought we were going to see some traditional fighting, but it turned out that we saw the city-fied version of the traditional fights (read: WWF-style). First up was El Tigre and The Shocker, both in hilarious spandex outfits that we strongly suspect were made by their Mamas. Things only got better after this: ninjas and midgets joined the fray! There were also several girl on girl fights, and they all wore traditional bolivian dress. This means their skirts went flying up when they soared through the air. That´s right, huge throws were a big part of this wrestling extravaganza.
Another key component of the event was audience participation. When the crowd disapproved of the fighters´methods (ie: breaking a wooden crate over the head of a fighter who was down) they threw food and garbage at the fighters. The fighters responded in kind, spraying water and sprite, and throwing garbage back at the crowd. We were in the front row, so things got a little messy for us. It was sort of like a cafeteria food fight, with costumes and punching.
Now, back to the program:
We arrived in Uyuni early in the morning, but tour operators were open for business. We were hounded by about 10 different agencies, and finally chose the one that offered us free coffee. It was 7AM, freezing cold, and we had just spent the last two hours of our bus ride listening to a crying baby (Stew groggily woke up with the baby´s cries, and muttered ¨voy a comerlo¨). We decided to be an ambitious and book a tour for that very day, starting at 10:30 AM. Our time is running out, so despite our extreme tiredness (beyond the crying baby, the bus ride was so bumpy that sleep was pretty fitfull for the two of us for the entire trip), we decided to push on.
We showed up at the tour office in plenty of time, stopping for breakfast at a stand on the street that sold some of the most delicious chicken sandwiches we´ve ever had. It was basically an elderly woman and a table with a platter of whole chickens and half a pig, some raw onions and hot peppers, and some of the most delicious hot-bbqish sauce you´ve ever tasted. They were such awesome sandwiches, we had them again the next day.
The tour ended up starting late, and that would be a theme for the rest of the day. Despite waiting around at every stop for our driver or whatever member of the group was currently missing (Ahem, Tori), we managed to see it all. Our first stop was the train graveyard, where at least a hundred decommisioned trains were rusting in the desert. We got to climb all over them and take cool photos. It was basically hunks of metal in the middle of nowhere. Pretty cool. Next, it was off to the small salt refining town of Colchani, where nothing much was happening except a few people selling artesania. Luckily, Tori found the rainbow wool hat she has been lusting after for half the price as those in La Paz! Stew found dice made out of salt. We are hoping they survive the Virginia humidiy when we return, they are so cool.
After all this putzing around (we signed up for the tour for the salt, people), we finally made it to the salt flat. We stopped first at the very edge of the 4,086 square mile, 100 ft. deep salt flat. There is some table salt production at the edges, which basically involved shovelling the salt into small, pyramid-like mounds to dry, then sifting and crushing it. Next, it was on to the salt hotel. It is made from bricks of salt that have been compressed. All the furniture inside the hotel is also made of salt. It´s hard not to want to lick everything.
After the salt hotel, we took a long drive through the empty, barren plain of salt to a volcano in the middle of the salt flat. As we´re approaching the dry season, the salt had begun to crack and turn a stark white that contrasted sharply with the bright blue sky above. It looked like the moon. We stopped off at the volcano for lunch, at which point Tori got confused about where every went and ended up starting the climb up the volcano. It was an awesome view -- the salt flat extended as far as you could see in every direction. Unfortunately, this hike wasn´t actually in the protocol, and Stew and the guide were forced to come looking for her. Lunch ended up being about 2 hours late, though it wasn´t entirely Tori´s fault: two other group members got seriously lost, and we were waiting longer for them.
On our way to the next stop, Isla Incahuasi, we jumped out of the car and took some cool pictures. There is no sense of perspective on the salt flat because you don´t have any reference points, so you can take funny pictures where it looks like a toy dinosaur is life-size, and gobbling up Tori and Stew. We also took ones where it looks like we are sitting on mountains. Incahuasi was a little lackluster - a mound of cacti and rock in the middle of the salt flat - but it was still an awesome tour overall.
We eschewed the night bus to Potosi for safety reasons (yes, we do think of safety!), and jumped on a 10 AM bus the following morning. It was every bit as bumpy as the ride from La Paz to Uyuni, but this time we got to listen to modern takes on traditional Bolivian classics at full volume the whole way. We booked a tour of the famed mines of Potosi first thing, and then slowly strolled around the town -- at 13,420 ft, it´s difficult to do anything too fast.
Our tour of the mines began with a visit to the miners´market, the only place in the world where dynamite is widely and freely available. A twelve-year-old could walk up to any stand and load himself up with enough dynamite to take the whole mine out. This is necessary, because twelve-year-olds also work in the mines. Also for sale at the miners´market are coca leaves and fruit drinks, which we bought to give to the miners as gifts. The miners have to buy all of their own working supplies because there is no mining company in Potosi, instead it is basically a cooperative. Only members of the cooperative can hire their own employees, so profitsharing doesn´t really happen. As there is no company to finance modernization of extraction technologies, the only real improvement since the colonial era is dynamite.
The next step was to put on bright yellow plastic pants, jackets, boots, and helmets. Tori´s were so big on her she was tripping over them, but they fit Stew like saranwrap on a burrito. Makes sense- they were the same size. We then drove up another few hundred meters to the mine entrance, where we all had to duck to get in. We began winding our way through the dusty, cramped labyrinth, with our guide, a former miner, stopping at intervels to explain the support structures in the mine and the various mineral formations. Sometimes we had to run to get out of the way of oncoming carts filled with minerals. The carts were propelled by running miners, and had so much momentum that they couldn´t be stopped. We had one hairy situation in which one of our fellow tourists practically leaped into Tori´s arms on the side of the tunnel to evade the racing cart. The tunnels got more hot and it became more difficult to breathe as we journeyed further inward. This was due to an increase in chemicals in the air, specifically arsenic, and the absence of any form of ventilation.
We stopped for a talk at the Tio of the mine, or the miners´deity. He is called the Tio because when the Spanish arrived, the Incans could not pronounce the word ¨Dios¨, meaning God, and wound up with Tio. The Tio is a syncretic deity that looks an awful lot like the Catholic devil, horns and all. Given that the devil is the God of the underworld, the miners took him for their own. Whenever they come to work, they make an offering to the Tio of pure alcohol (96 percent pure hellfire known as Bolivian whisky), coca leaves, and cigarrettes. We made an offering of our own, which involved pouring a bit of the whisky on the ground and then taking two sips each. Our guide admonished us not to wince when drinking the liquor, or it would offend the Tio. This proved challenging, but somehow we smiled. At least we learned something in college.
After our visit to the Tio, we went deeper still and saw some actual digging at the veins. Stew took his hand with the shovel, but Tori wasn´t allowed. No women are allowed to work in the interior of the mines. Legend has it that the mountain (and all mountains) itself, Cerro Rico, is a woman, and that she will grow jealous and hide all of the minerals if a woman attempts to mine. It wasn´t until 20 years ago that women were allowed in as tourists. To be fair, the womens´lib movement should not bother fighting for the right to work this awful job. The work is punishing, as it entails heavy manual labor in a blistering hot, unventilated area around harmful chemicals and explosions. The average life expentancy after entering as a worker can be as low as seven years. Really, some kind of liberation movement for the workers´in the mines should be organized....but there isn´t really any other industry in Potosi, so we doubt that this will happen.
When we left the mines, we were taught how to use dynamite and got to blow up a tire! We mixed sodium nitrate (we think) with nitroglycerine (dynamite) and it went off way better than any roman candle we´ve seen. The tire went flying 200 meters in the air and landed high up on the side of the mountain.
Although the tour was, for the most part, physically and emotionally draining, we´re glad we did it.
Today we are off to Santa Cruz on a 20 hour bus ride. Thank God we have 2 ambien left.
Love,
Tori and Stew
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