The Mines of Potosi

Potosi, Bolivia

Potosi, the self proclaimed "highest city in the world", was just a short bus journey on from Uyuni. After our trip to see the Salt Flats we thought we had started to acclimatise and felt much more confident of dealing with being so high up. But the altitude came and slapped us in the face again.
Unable to do much more than grab a quick dinner of fried chicken (which is hugely popular here in Bolivia, by the way) we made straight for our hostel to rest up.
The hostel we chose, Juan Carlos V, was another fine choice. We had some difficulty aquiring a room to begin with, as we only speak "un poco de español" and our new landlord spoke even less English, but after a lot of gesturing and some fine translation from one of the other guests we were all booked in for the night.
After dumping our bags in our room we made for the rooftop terrace which gave a beautiful view of the city and many mountains surrounding it. It's astonishing to think that so many people could find their way to and live so happily tucked away in those mountains.
The next day there was only one thing on my mind - go to see the mines. Potosi is famous for it's mines, which produce silver and zinc among other natural resources and caused something of a silver rush amoung Europeans in the 1500s. Georgie, though, was understandably nervous about heading in. We decided to book with a company called Real Deal Tours after being recommended them by a friend we met on our Salt Flats expedition. She had also been nervous about being in the confined space but had assured us that she hadn't felt too scared on this tour.
So we handed our money over and waited to depart.
First up we went to a local market as it is the custom to buy presents for any miners you encounter whilst trawling through the mines. Common items to pick from include drinks (mining is thirsty work), Coca Leaves (miners love to chew on these as they work away) and dynamite (apparently quite useful in the mining industry). We went with drinks and coca leaves.
We then got kitted out in waterproof over layers, breathing masks and miners helmets and made our way to the mines.
They were so interesting, both in how vast they have become (the sheer manpower it will have taken to carve these labyrinths in to the mountains is crazy!) and in seeing how these people earn their livings. Our tour guide Efrain told us that his father had worked down the mines for 70 years and out of those that we bumped in to this number ranged from 12 to 40 odd. To try and add a little perspective to that, we came out with heavy lungs from all the dust and debris from spending barely 2 hours inside and we had worn masks.
Now these mines aren't exactly Moria but they are pretty scary in parts. The worst of which came when we had to scale three flights of ladders in quick succession, I didn't dare look down. Oh and once we'd done this we came face to face with the devil, or 'Teo' as the locals call him. It is their belief that he owns all of the minerals in the mountains and as such they have built a statue of and regularly pay homage to him, offering llama blood, coca leaves and alcohol as marks of respect.The interesting part about the alcohol is that it is 96%, this is because the miners believe that by drinking the purest alcohol possible, Teo will reward them with pure Silver and not a mixture of elements that then need refining.
You can also add to this frightfulness the nightmare of nightmares - I dropped the first memory card we used in our camera somewhere in the mine. I'm so annoyed that we've lost 150 odd images from our first few days in Rio, but hey, at least we didn't run in to a Balrog!