Cerro Rico

I visited the silver mines in the Cerro Rico today. An eye-opening experience. I'm in Potosi right now, the highest city in the world at over 4000m. It was built on the rich mineral deposits of the surrounding "cerros". Mining's a bit less important than at its height, but there are still about 4-5000 miners working the mines.

So I've done quite a few things on this trip, and some of them not quite as relaxing as a luxury cruise ship in the Galapagos (though the sea-sickness wasn't all that comfortable...), like hiking up to 4700m, then 5300m, biking down the "death road" outside of Coroico, taking epic bus journeys... But nothing compared to this. Guess I had a clue when I signed the disclaimer saying sh*t happens, including "cave-ins", which apparently kill quite a few miners. Almost wished they'd just left it at sh*t happens...

We went into the Cerro Rico, donning our coveralls, hard hats with headlamps and bandanas to keep from inhaling the dust, silicon and asbestos. Lots of miners die after working in the mines from respiratory diseases. Not difficult to see why as I had a hard time breathing down there. Definitely not for the claustrophobic. We scrambled and climbed through the mine, at times on our hands and knees, down a couple of levels, knowing the way out was back the way we came in. The mine we were in went about 70m down and about half a kilometre deep into the mountain. There, the miners work for hours on end without eating; just chewing coca leaves. We met a couple of miners, one of whom had been working the mines for 37 years, starting when he was just 11 years old. (It's technically illegal to work in the mines until you're 18, but it's hard to enforce.) Another miner was hammering a chisel into the rock so he could stick a piece of dynamite in it to blow it up. We were down there for only a couple of hours, and I barely made it. It was tough. Respect.