July 19, 2016
Once The Minte: days off in Potosi
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Two days off here already.
It has been a time to eat. There are many pizza type restaurants in town catering to the tastes of the gringo tourists like myself. The best value for money meal has to be "Lomito"; simply, a thick toasted steak sandwich with crisp lettuce and tomato salad, served with freshly cut chips, best accompanied with beer; of which, Bolivia has some of the best beers I've tasted. My favourite being "Huari".
Potosi used to be the richest city in the Spanish Empire back in the day, the 16th to 18th century. Here they minted the Spanish Crown's money, because of the rich reserves of silver mined from "Cerro Rico" or Rich Hill, on the edge of town; apparently, using slave labour of indigenes people.
Today there's a semblances of former extravagances in the city's architecture, in the buildings around the main plaza. But once outside of the centre its very much Third World poverty. A contrast to the white European tourists that sit around in cafes in those central few blocks, here to do their tour of the mine.
The Cerro Rico mine is the main employer of the male population. The mine run by a cooperative these days. Its deep shaft mining, ie tunnels deep into the hill, using small hand tools like drills. Also, a lot of explosives are used to break up the ore, which is manually shovelled onto big trolleys running on rails, which when full are manually pushed out to the surface for processing.
Its a dusty dangerous environment, where the miners scrape a meager living while developing respiratory ailments.
The age at which most start working in the mine is as young as 12-14 years old. Many don't live beyond 40 because of the unhealthy working conditions.
I did my mine tour during my first visit here. I wasn't interested in doing a second tour, as its very claustrophobic down in the narrow dark tunnels underground using a torch on the helmet to show the way, provided by the tour company. Incidentally, most of the tour guides are ex-miners.
Instead I just chilled out for a few days.
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