Mmmm Salty!

Hello and welcome to the latest blog update in my South American odyssey.

I am currently sitting, writing away in my hostel in Potosi in Southern Bolivia. Potosi itself has a number of claims to fame; firstly it is the highest city in the world (4060m) and secondly it used to once be the most important city in the entire of the Americas. This is because Potosi was built on the site of a huge silver mine which effectively bankrolled the Spanish empire. The mine was in fact so large that it is still used today to mine silver, tin and zinc among other minerals. However where the mine was once worked by South American slaves for the benefit of the Spanish empire, it is now owned by a cooperative of the workers.

That is not to say that conditions are much better. This morning I did a tour of the mine and frankly i'm amazed that anyone can last a day in there let alone 30 years. Some of the shafts literally require that you crawl through them, which was fine for me as I don't suffer from claustrophobia, however a couple of the other guys on the tour did and they really struggled. Anyway the conditions in the mines itself are so bad that 40 men die a year in the mine , either from carbon monoxide, or cave-ins and that is excluding the number that die every year from lung problems such as silicosis (the average life expectancy of a miner is 30-40 depending on whether they enterec the mine at 10 or 20).

Cave-ins are not uncommon, due largely to the way in which they mine: the miner drills into the rock, shoves in a stick of dynamite and then runs. For this reason the miners market in the city sells all kinds of things such as various explosives, fuses and dynamite. My guide advised that i purchased some dynamite as a gift for the miners, telling me thery would would give me a demonstration. I kind of expected dynamite to be expensive, but a stick of dynamite, a fuse and some ammonia nitrate to increase the explosion cost less than $3 US. However you need not worry because they have place an age restriction to buy the dynamite, you have to be at least 9! The explosion itself was great, but there was attached a warning: 'don't try this at home'. Apparently about 6 months back, some English tourist bought some extra dynamite to try and set off there own explosion, however instead got drunk and accidentally blwe up a hostel in Uyuni (see below). The result was that they ended up having to pay $10,000 US to repair the hostel and $12000 US to get out of jail!

The experience was a slightly humbling one, I was frankly amazed that people would work in such conditions out of choice. But this is because there is no other work. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America and it shows. It has its feet firmly planted in the 3rd world. For example the country only has 1 paved highway, all the others consist of dirt roads (which made for an interesting 6 hour bus ride from Uyuni to Potosi). I have not seen poverty in this scale since Venezuela.

Anyway aside from that, I got to Bolivia 3 days ago. I arrived in Uyuni in the South of the country following a frankly awe-inspiring trip across the Atacama Desert and the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Plains). The sights were amazing; red, white and green lakes full of Flamingoes, boiling geysers, volcanoes and of course the Uyuni Salt plain which stretches as far as the eyes can see. This was certainly a good way to travel from Chile to Bolivia and is without a doubt one of the most amazing things I have done in my trip so far.

Anyway I best be off, there are people waiting to use the computers, a loading all these photos has taken quite some time.

I'll update you all again soon.

Phil