Potosi Mines

Got up early to go down the mines, not sure if this is the best idea in the world. We got suited up with overalls, helmets and lights and away we go..not really much of a briefing..in fact any other country in the world there would be a 3 day induction before you set foot in the mine. Off we went to the mine, it's a working mine so we ha stick ve to bring some gifts for the mines, so we were taken to the miners market where we picked up some fizzy orange, a stick of dynamite, a stick of annomium nitrate, some fuses and blasting caps and some coca leaves, we casually walked out of the shop with this as if it were milk and bread! We went to the refinery before the mines and it was pretty rustic, they don't smelt the silver and othleveler minerals in Potosi, they just seperate it from the crap before shipping it off elsewhere.

After the refinery we headed up to the mines, some 10,000 people work up here and the mountain itself is on the verge of imploding due to the overmining in the region. So we headed in to the mines, it's tough enough to breathe in Potosi on the surface let alone in the mines, we wandered in about 400 metres and sat down, it was so tough to breathe and the dust was incredible..even though I had a bandana over my mouth and nose it reaked havoc on me and I'm great with any dust whatsoever.

We sat down for a couple of minutes to climatise to the mine, a few miners came past and sat down and had a chat with us. Our guide gave them some orange, the one guy he was talking with was 62 years old and pretty ill yet he still worked down there as the level of pay was muich greater then the average bolivian (they get 100bolivianos a day [10 EURO]). We wandered further into the mine and were going to go down 4 levels, each level being 25 metres below the last level. We had to crawl down this cavity to get to the next level, at this point Tina had more then enough so I went down with the rest of the group.

Crawling down the cavity was interesting as some miners were climbing up it past us at the same time. The longer you were down there the easier it became to breathe but it was still a difficult chore, wandering through each level we met 4 miners pushing a cart on the tracks, 2 tonnes of rubble each time and they do this 10 times peer day. We got further down and the dust was getting uncomfortable and at times we could here faint blasts of dynamite! One of the miners asked me for my bandana, I gave it to him as I'd only 20minutes left down there, he'd to practically live in it.

Before we exited the mine, we went to see Tio, the miners god, each mine has a few of these, they believe it brings good luck with finding minerals and prevents bad luck. They offer it alcohol and coca leaves as gifts.

We climbed through another cavity or two and it was then only a couple of hundred metres until the exit, I sighed a breath of relief when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Leaving the tunnel left me with a different perspective on work, no matter how shit your job is, at least you don't have to work in that hellhole. So after bumping my hardhat off rocks a dozen times and leaving with a kilo of dust in my lungs

I have to hand it to the guys that work down there, they are there because they want to be, and they just get on with it. At least all the miners I met had helmets. So I'm not sure if this trip is for everyone, if your closterphobic, have breathing issues or just have plain sense you should avoid it, the waiver I signed would be enough to put you off it! And after the recent enough cave in with the Chilean miners that should be the deal closer. So to sum it up, am I glad I went? Yes. Would I do it again...Not on your life!