Silver Mine Tour

First off, the average Bolivian in about 5’ 3” while I am 6’ 0”, those 9 inches would prove to be a huge disadvantage…

The silver mine tour is basically the reason you stop in Potosi, not that it’s a rundown town by any means, but it’s by far the main attraction (aside from being the highest city in the world at 4,300 meter – but there’s not much to do to ‘see’ that attraction).  It also isn’t the typical tour, there are no ropes, no safety nets, it’s a real working mine with actual workers, tourist just happen to be there.

The day started on the earlier side, around 8 the tour company came to the hostel to give us our pants, boots, jacket, belt, helmet, and most importantly, light.

The highest city in the world - Potosi

We'd be going inside this mountain

We stopped to get gifts for the mines, since basically we’re just in their way during the tour, we got them juice, coca leaves, gloves, and beers.  The story with the coca leaves is crazy, the workers work for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, they eat breakfast at home, then chew a ton of coca leaves which gives them energy and stymies their appetites during the day, and then a huge dinner.  Some of these guys look like chipmunks they have so many coca leave.

That's real dynamite is his mouth

Our guide giving instruction on how to not die in the mines

Then we just dove right into the mines, following the rail tracks that the workers push/pull the carts on.  The tunnel was pretty narrow, a little wider than a twin bed, and the roof was not much above our helmets to start.  Quickly the roof got lower and lower until I was walking in an awkward crouch with my head tilted to one side to avoid all the wooden logs, pipes, and rocks that were in the way.  I was leading the group down the first tunnel, behind the guide and kept hitting my head, each time she would yell back ‘mind your head!’  I wanted to yell back, ‘I’m not 4 feet tall! (average height of Bolivian woman is 4’ 8”),’ as our guide was short and was just walking like normal for most of the tour, barely noticing the tunnel.  I couldn’t help think of Skee Low ‘I wish I was a little bit taller,’ which of course made no sense as I hit my head for the 6^th time on another low hanging rock.

Surrounding this statue were bottles of 95% alcohol,
each morning the workers ask for good fortune with
sacrifices of coca leaves and alcohol, they also party
here on their days off...

There were several points when the tunnel got so small we had to crawl to get through, it was wild.  Then there is also the heat, the deeper into the mine you go, the hotter it gets, as well as getting harder to breath.  To sum up, we’re at 13,000ft (trouble breathing as it is), hiking through a sauna of a mine, no room to move, and tough to get a full breath.  It was intense.

We were in the mines for about 2 hours, and at the end I really did want to get out, I could not imagine working down there all day long, everyday.  The carts they push around all day come in two sizes, the ‘small’ ones weigh over a ton when full, the big ones are 2 ½ tons.  Their goal each day is to get 10 loads of rock out of the mines.  Then there was the guy shoveling rocks, all day long, he was sweating more than I’ve ever seen another human being sweat.

At one point we stopped for a break, and sat with some miners and gave them some gifts.  There were calling us loco, and I agreed that at that moment it seemed strange.  Being a miner is a shit life, you get paid $15-20 a day, for heavy manual labor and being exposed to dust, chemicals, harsh metals, low oxygen… and we paid money to come down there.  A lot of miners start when they are 14, work until they’re 55, and die of some lung complication at 60.  It’s just sad.  I honestly think it’s the worst job you could ever have.  Around Potosi, 16,000 people (mostly men) work in the mines, 500 work in the mine we saw.

It was a great tour, getting to see really what it’s like for a miner was truly amazing.  Yes it made me thoroughly appreciate what I have, and I couldn’t believe I ever had a negative thought about any of my old jobs, because working at a desk is cake compared to that.