Silver mines, Potosí
Hola from Bolivia!!! I haven´t being writting that much because I´be being doing lots and lots of cool things to write about :). Let´s start with Potosí, the richest city in the world in the 18th century, while New York or London were only little babies
I entered Potosi from the Salar de Uyuni. It´s the highest city in the world at 4070 meters above the sea level. You can hardly breath when you get there and it´s coooold.
It has a very nice colonial center, declared world heritage by UNESCO.
But let´s get to the interesting part, eh?
A shepherd discovered a shiny metal on the ground one night after he had light a fire. “Oooh what´s this?” thought the shepherd, yes sir that is silver my friend! Then of course the spanish found out and it was pretty bad for the shepherd and all the indigenous people who were sent to the mines as slaves. The Cerro Rico (rich hill) has being drained since the 18th century and has lost 300 meters in altitute because of the dynamite explotions. As I already said, this colonial city was the epicenter of all the silver owned by Spain. Now shamefully is Bolivia´s poorest city. Miners earn close to nothing a day (3 €), there are 9 year old kids coverd in dust moving stones in buckets and the air filled with arsenic dust gives the workers an average of 25 years life expectancy and for what? There´s hardly any silver left! It´s sad to see this but of course when will you be able to enter a mine through it´s narrow tunnels, wearing rubber boots, a helmet and a torch? Exactly! So I went.
We had this crazy ex-miner guide, who of course suggested to buy some dynamite, he he.
He lit the fuse (mecha) and put the dynamite in his mouth! After that it was time for the pictures! Some minutes later he buried it and POW big and loud explotion!
Inside the mine he told us about El Tío, the miner´s God who is in fact the devil, and about a little ceremony done by the miners.
Every friday they gather around the statue of El Tío and offer coca leafs, cigarettes and 96% alcohol, which they drink afterwards until they get completely hammered! We did the ceremony and that alcohol really burns your throat!
Just check the pictures I´m not gonna bore you more with words 😉
And now some randome pictures that I really like from Potosí
You better run for school!
Tags: Bolivia, Photography, Potosi, Simon Uribe, Travel
simonuribe@yahoo.com
hey Simon 🙂
Wenn du eines Tages nach Paris kommst, dann zeige ich dir die Katakomben (war schon dort mit dem verrückten Pole !)… Aber die Silbergrube hâtte ich gern mit dir gelebt 🙂
mach’s gut
Simon! Quality photos as ever! And having been myself you are letting me remember all the fun times I had in Bolivia!! Glad to see you survived the Death too!!nrSteve