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