TNT

Potosi´s gimmick is the silver mines, and I´m on the tour with a Swede and Australian and a handful of Italians. I´ve heard good things about the tour, but also that it´s a death trap.

I´m told it´s traditional to buy gifts for the miners, and so, we´re first taken to the miners market. In addition to their penchant for coca leaves and fizzy drinks, we´re offered sticks of dynamite. A stick and it´s associated parts, fuse, etc, sets me back a one pound fifty. The possibilities for this stick and I are endless.

The town is dominated by a red pyramid mountain. It´s essentially the pyramid mine of Mars from thinking man´s action blockbuster, Total Recall. After being kitted out in little more that wellington boots and a layer to keep the dust off, we start our tour at the refinery. We´re very explicitly instructed not to touch anything. There centrepiece of the operation is a spinning mill that´s crushing the mined rocks. I don´t need to be told not to touch this two metre long, two metre diameter crushing machine. The rest of the operation is rustic at best. The walls are lined with egg cartons. Apparatus includes scoops made of baked bean cans and rows of rotating water wheels made from Coke and Sprite bottle caps that pick up cap fulls of arsenic and deposit it on the rocks to start chemical reactions.

Above the entrance of the mine is a battered child´s doll covered in llama blood. Had I been here last week, I´d have seen the annual slaughtering of llamas and offering of blood to the god of the mine. We descend into a labyrinth questionably reenforced tunnels which occasionally narrow to only four or five feet in diameter, forcing me to use a crouched walk with hands on knees. When our head torches are off, there´s the rare sight, or lack thereof, of true pitch black. The air is thin and laced with dust. The miners constant exposure to this means their life expectancy is little more than fifty, when they´ll most likely die of Silicosis.

Somewhere in the depths sits Tio, the god to which the llama blood is offered. Unfortunately, the miners artistic abilities, in so far as the construction of this statue of god, is about as sophisticated as their tunnel contruction.

After an hour or two of rambling around in the dark, I´m pretty glad to be outside and breathing what passes for air up here.