RSS SPIRIT

Enter only if you have an extra lung



The mine tour operator is a nice guy, you find him outside the one hotel in the windswept, infinitely sad city of Potosi. It is one of the highest cities in the world, just at the edge where human beings can live without deteriorating rapidly. The sunset brings black stiff winds, and the lights which line the street market stalls are helpless against it.

The tour operator finds the appropriate minibus; he pays for "dos gringos en uno negro." As gringos typically pay higher for everything in this country. You do not go directly to the mine, but into town to the outdoor stalls. You cannot show up at the mine empty handed. The miners require gifts. Primarily dynamite, fuses and coca leaves.

The dynamite is to blow holes in the rock to find more silver. The coca is to numb one's skull in order to work in perhaps one of the most difficult jobs in the world. Coca is what they make cocaine out of. Chewing the leaves gives a milder buzz, numbs up the mouth and provide an inoculation of euphoria against the rigors of a low-oxygen environment.

The guide knows what you should buy. You pinch some of the coca leaves and use the special activator compound that you rub on your gums to get the full extraction.








no permit required










You chew on the coca leaves because you are ascending. The town of Potosi is already high enough for anybody with only two lungs. The minibus climbs quickly into a mountainous wasteland.

The tour guide tells you the basics. Spanish come along raping and pillaging and find huge vein of silver in mine nearby. They try to import African slaves to work the mine but the conditions are too difficult and they die too quickly. So they conscript locals to work the mines, giving them a pittance while shipping most the swag back to fund disastrous religious wars.

The mine has long ago lost its power to make one rich. Now a few short-statured and short-lived locals press on against the rock, finding small pockets here and there. The dynamite is apparently a dangerous mining technique necessitated by the paucity of the good stuff left in the mountain.






Like they used to, with corresponding
high mortality rates





The tour guide operator comes from a family of miners. All the other miners know him and appear to like him. They also like the looks of the 'gifts' you have bought. They seize upon the coca leaves and stick them in already bursting cheeks. You take a little yourself as the altitude up here is ridiculous. You look into the holes, it does not look terribly appealing.

Because you do not act like typical gringos and have brought much coca, the miners take a shine to you. They offer to blow up one of the sticks of dynamite you have brought. You agree that this would be a fun activity.






Men with other men blowing things up






But enough terrestrial fun. Now it is time to go into the hole. You are given filthy hard hats and told to alert the guide if you feel ready to pass out. This is not the first time you have heard this warning in this country.





Is there lunch on this tour?













The tour guide mistakes you for fit. This is no average gringo tour. He takes you deep into the mine, where there you are still 16,000 feet above sea level and also at the bottom of a deep dank hole. You do not feel well from the start. The fumes, the lack of oxygen. How in god's name does anybody go in these holes and pound away at this rock every day?

There are some mechanical tools, but much also is done by hand. Small brown men with sad eyes pound the rock with hammers. The tour guide tells us that it is very much a family business. Sons follow fathers into the mine with a faustian bargain: a little better life than the average desperately poor Bolivian in exchange for an early death due to lung disease.

Then the tour operator casually mentions that he already has lung disease from the short time he spent in the mine as a kid.








As dad used to say, "Work a little while in a Bolivan mine and then let me hear you complain."









The Potosi mine tour has everything you might imagine. Filth, murky tunnels, frightening belly-crawls through tiny blown apertures in the rock, a recent dynamite explosion and subsequent poison gasses.

Frankly it is flabbergasting that the miners last as long as they do, working in the conditions they do. The perilous life they lead makes them naturally attracted to divine assistance such as they can get. The tour guide takes you to a rock cul-de-sac where the miners give offerings to an old mountain god. As bad as you feel and as claustrophobic as you are, you do too.







Another coca leaf another day of protection


















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