Potosi Silver Mines

Our next stop was Potosi, the highest city in the world, which sits at over 4000m and is home to the mountain Cerro Rico which over the last few hundred years has been pillaged for its silver and other precious metals and minerals. During the 1500s Potosi was probably the richest city in the world, but today it is run down and depressed.


A tour of the mines is one of the main attractions in Potosi so we got up early one morning to head up to Cerro Rico.

Our tour started with us getting kitted up in long pants, gumboots, jackets, helmet and headlamp and a battery belt (by this stage of our trip we were quite used to looking ridiculous) and heading to the street where the miners buy their provisions and I'm not talking about food...
We bought dynamite (even kids can buy it in Potosi) a bottle of 96% alcohol (we all had to drink a mouthful before entering the mine) and bags of coca leaves (the miners´s staple diet). And yes, that is a stick of dynamite in my mouth!

Then we headed up the mountain, where we had a look around a silver processing plant

which was then followed up by our guides making up three dynamite bombs, lighting the short fuses in front of us and then allowing people to hold the dynamite and have their photos taken while the fuse quickly burnt down. OSH would not have had a bar of it!!

All of a sudden the time came for them to race 50 metres down the road and bury the dynamite in the ground. This was followed by them racing back along the road to where we were waiting with our cameras - they barely made it half the distance before the things exploded.

No harm done, except for rattling a few tourist's nerves and we headed into the mine. The mine was dark, dusty, hot and extremely claustrophobic as we moved between the different levels. I think it would have been 10 times worse if there had actually been men working down there but we were still glad to make our way out.