That's all there is to see in Lima, that despite its past importance, lacks the charm of most other colonial cities. I visited the impressive catacombs of San Francisco, went to the interesting National Museum and was fortunate enough to watch Argentina play (and undeservely lose to) Brazil on the final of the Copa América.
Since all flighs heading for Santiago were full after the competition (as I painfully learned spending 10 hours and a full night at the airport), I ended up staying a couple more days doing nothing but relaxing in the last city I'm visiting on the South American part of my trip. Hopefully, tomorrow at 7 am I will be crossing the sky heading south.
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Lines, dunes and birds
After Arequipa I went to Nazca, wondering whether or not it was worth it to pay a lot of money to see the famous Nazca Lines on a 30-minute flight. The weather took that decision for me, as our flight was cancelled due to low visibility early in the morning.
That same day I headed to the former luxurious resort of Huacachina lagoon, where I relaxed for a couple days, rode a fun sand-buggie and improved my sand-boarding skills :)
My next stop was Pisco, from where I visited Islas Ballestas (also known as the Galapagos of the Poor) and saw hundreds of cormorans and pelicans, but not many sea lions as I was expecting to. And of course, I tried one of Perú's most typical dishes: ceviche (raw fish with strong lemon and onions; delicious!)
That same day I headed to the former luxurious resort of Huacachina lagoon, where I relaxed for a couple days, rode a fun sand-buggie and improved my sand-boarding skills :)
My next stop was Pisco, from where I visited Islas Ballestas (also known as the Galapagos of the Poor) and saw hundreds of cormorans and pelicans, but not many sea lions as I was expecting to. And of course, I tried one of Perú's most typical dishes: ceviche (raw fish with strong lemon and onions; delicious!)
The other white city
After Cuzco, I headed to Arequipa, known as the white city although only the churches and the Plaza de Armas have this color. I found this city nice but a bit deceptining after all the comments I had heard, so after visiting the impressive Santa Catalina convent I decided to go to the Colca Canyon. There I did a 2-day trekking to an oasis at the bottom of the canyon, had a close view of Condors flying by and enjoyed the festivities of Cabanaconde.
The capital of the Inca empire
And certainly one of the most important cities in the whole continent. I spent several days strolling along the beautiful (and also very touristry) streets of Cusco and visiting most of the inca ruins around it, including the spectacular Machu Picchu. I also did a 3-day rafting expedition on the Apurimac, trekked to the Choquequirao ruins, assisted to the overrated Inti Raymi festival and watched Spain being eliminated and Greece winning the title, among a few others games of the Euro Cup.
The islands on lake Titicaca
Once the road-blockades allowed us to, we travelled to Copacabana, on the Bolivian shore of lake Titicaca, where we visited the scenic Isla del Sol (Sun Island), where the sun created Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, the founders or the Inca civilization. Then we crossed the border into Perú to head towards Puno, and unattractive city that harbors the oldest passenger ship of the Lake and the base to visiting the floating islands of the Uros and the touristry island of Taquile.
The Mammas and the Pampas
Actually, the real tittle should read "The jungle and the pampas", since those are the two areas I visited from the wonderful and laidback city of Rurrenabaque, on the bank of the Beni river. We saw all sort of animals, ranging from alligators and anacondas to monkeys and all sort of birds, and went through an interesting (and short) jugle survivor course.
Saturday, July 24, 2004
The city of "highests"
You don't need to spend a lot of time in La Paz to learn that this is the city of "highest": it has the highest commercial airport in the world, the highest golf course in the world, the highest skiing slope in the world and, presumably, many other "highest" records. Ironically, the only undeserved title is the one most people know it for, since, as I said before, Sucre is the actual capital of Bolivia.
No matter how you arrive in La Paz, by plane or ground transportation, your first view of the city will be from above. And it is a spectacular one, since La Paz is located at the bottom of a canyon in the Bolivian Altiplano. Spaniards chose this site to protect it from the winds and cold temperatures of the high plane.
I must say that La Paz is not really a city, but a huge street market surrounded by buildings. It's almost impossible to find a piece of sidewalk where nobody is selling anything. You can buy deliciusly cheap food (salteñas and fruit salads were my favorite), all types of Indian handycrafs, pirate CDs and DVDs, drinks, calculators, clothes,... just anything that you can think of. There are no supermarkets there, but what's the need when the city itself is one of the world's biggest open air markets.
One of my favorite spots in La Paz is the Pampahasi viewpoint, where you get a spectacular view of the whole city. Also worth visiting is the impressive "Valle de la Luna" (yeap, another one), where you can walk between amazing peaks strangly shaped by the rain and water. And not to be missed either is the Coca Museum, where I learned a lot of interesting facts about this controversial veggie (among other things, Coca Cola still uses nowadays about 240 tons of coca leaves for its famous drink, although just for flavoring purposes).
Visiting the world's highest skiing slope, Chacaltaya, was another great trip. Not only I got a spectacular view of La Paz, most of the peaks of the "Cordillera Real", lake Titicaca and quite a few colorful lagoons, but it was probably the easiest (and fastest way) of climbing a 5,488 m-high mountain, since the bus droped me off at 5,300.
However, if you think walking the remaining 188m was a piece of cake, think again. Walking up at that altitude is a good challenge and we had to stop every 10m or so to recover our breath. One of the girls in our group suffered high-altitude sickness and had to be taken down to be administered oxygen. So given these "favorable" conditions, I found truly mind-blogging that anyone would attempt skiing at this height, specially considering that the slope has no mechanical lift and you have to walk up, in the snow, carrying your skies and all your gear. In other words, you must really, really, really love the sport to go skiing in La Paz :)
We also decided to visit the Tihuanaco ruins, claimed to be the most important ones in Bolivia as they were the main site of the pre-Incan Tihuanaco society. I must confess that I found them quite deceptioning, since there is very little to see (most of it is underground, waiting to be excavated) and even that seems to have suffered heavy reconstruction.
Additionally, we got the feeling (and this applies to most guided visits of Incan and pre-Incan sites in the continent) that the information we were given was little more than guesswork, specially considering that these cultures had no writing and it's virtualy impossible to uncover most of their secrets. Most guides seem obsessed with making these societies look much more evolved than they actually were, and quite frequently you are giving information that is plainly false. During this tour, for example, our guide tried to convince us that 48 little soldiers on one wall together with 4 other soldiers on another wall represented the 52 weeks of the year. But how the Tihuanacos discovered the 7-day week concept created by the Romans remains a mystery for all of us (including our guide).
But my favorite activity in La Paz was the breath-taking downhill bicycle ride to Coroico, certainly one of the most exciting things I've done in this whole trip. Riding a state-of-the-art bicycle (double hydraulic disc-brakes) and descending 3,600 m in only 64 km along a narrow, bumpy (and ofter muddy) dirt road with vertical drops of up to 1,000 m, enjoying spectacular views of green rain-forest valleys and peaks is an experience hard to match.
This road was declared in 1994 "The World's Most Dangerous Road" by the World Bank, and there's a reason for it. There are dozens of fatal accidents every year (our guide told us one every 2 weeks) and all the crosses placed along the road are a disturbing and constant reminder of how many people have lost their lives here. The main cause for that tragic record is that the road is extremely narrow (at some points I don't think it's wider than 3m) and land-slides on the cliff-side are frequent due to the various waterfalls that drop on the road. In fact, it's the only road in Bolivia where you drive on the left, so drivers can see how close the are to the cliff when they are maneuvering to avoid on-coming traffic.
Unfortunately, when we rode down the road it was raining and foggy, so we could't enjoy the magnificent views of the cliffs. Although you could also say that luckily, it was raining and foggy and we could not see the drops of the cliffs! Anyway, that made it even more fun, riding on the mudd, crossing rivers and controlling the bike sliding on the turns. Spectacular!
After that thrilling experience we decided to relax for a couple days at the wonderful hotel Esmeralda at Coroico, escaping from the cold of the heights for the first time in many weeks and enjoying the swimming-pool, the sauna (well, I didn't get to use it but it was there) and the beautiful views of the valleys. That was without a doubt the best place I've slept in the whole trip, and also the best value-for-money (3,5 euros per night is a true bargain).
We intended to take a 10-hour jeep trip from there to the jungle, but unfortunately the roads where being blocked by demonstrators and when the blockade was finally over, a bridge collapsed. Ten people died the day before trying to cross through the river in a truck, so we had no alternative but to go up to La Paz by bus (on the most dangerous road in the world, something I wanted to avoid by all means) and then fly to the jungle. So if you think going down this road on a bike was scary, I cannot describe what the return trip was like on a bus almost as wide as the entire road. On the bicycle you go as fast and as close to the cliff as you want (or as the oncoming traffic lets you), but in a bus you are no longer in control (I'm affraid not even the driver was in control all time). And this time there was no fog to hide the drop.
I was sitting at a window on the cliff side and I can tell you that many times, when I looked out the window, I could see the vertical drop, but not the road or where the drop ended. That was, without a doubt, the "most dangerous ride of my trip".
No matter how you arrive in La Paz, by plane or ground transportation, your first view of the city will be from above. And it is a spectacular one, since La Paz is located at the bottom of a canyon in the Bolivian Altiplano. Spaniards chose this site to protect it from the winds and cold temperatures of the high plane.
I must say that La Paz is not really a city, but a huge street market surrounded by buildings. It's almost impossible to find a piece of sidewalk where nobody is selling anything. You can buy deliciusly cheap food (salteñas and fruit salads were my favorite), all types of Indian handycrafs, pirate CDs and DVDs, drinks, calculators, clothes,... just anything that you can think of. There are no supermarkets there, but what's the need when the city itself is one of the world's biggest open air markets.
One of my favorite spots in La Paz is the Pampahasi viewpoint, where you get a spectacular view of the whole city. Also worth visiting is the impressive "Valle de la Luna" (yeap, another one), where you can walk between amazing peaks strangly shaped by the rain and water. And not to be missed either is the Coca Museum, where I learned a lot of interesting facts about this controversial veggie (among other things, Coca Cola still uses nowadays about 240 tons of coca leaves for its famous drink, although just for flavoring purposes).
Visiting the world's highest skiing slope, Chacaltaya, was another great trip. Not only I got a spectacular view of La Paz, most of the peaks of the "Cordillera Real", lake Titicaca and quite a few colorful lagoons, but it was probably the easiest (and fastest way) of climbing a 5,488 m-high mountain, since the bus droped me off at 5,300.
However, if you think walking the remaining 188m was a piece of cake, think again. Walking up at that altitude is a good challenge and we had to stop every 10m or so to recover our breath. One of the girls in our group suffered high-altitude sickness and had to be taken down to be administered oxygen. So given these "favorable" conditions, I found truly mind-blogging that anyone would attempt skiing at this height, specially considering that the slope has no mechanical lift and you have to walk up, in the snow, carrying your skies and all your gear. In other words, you must really, really, really love the sport to go skiing in La Paz :)
We also decided to visit the Tihuanaco ruins, claimed to be the most important ones in Bolivia as they were the main site of the pre-Incan Tihuanaco society. I must confess that I found them quite deceptioning, since there is very little to see (most of it is underground, waiting to be excavated) and even that seems to have suffered heavy reconstruction.
Additionally, we got the feeling (and this applies to most guided visits of Incan and pre-Incan sites in the continent) that the information we were given was little more than guesswork, specially considering that these cultures had no writing and it's virtualy impossible to uncover most of their secrets. Most guides seem obsessed with making these societies look much more evolved than they actually were, and quite frequently you are giving information that is plainly false. During this tour, for example, our guide tried to convince us that 48 little soldiers on one wall together with 4 other soldiers on another wall represented the 52 weeks of the year. But how the Tihuanacos discovered the 7-day week concept created by the Romans remains a mystery for all of us (including our guide).
But my favorite activity in La Paz was the breath-taking downhill bicycle ride to Coroico, certainly one of the most exciting things I've done in this whole trip. Riding a state-of-the-art bicycle (double hydraulic disc-brakes) and descending 3,600 m in only 64 km along a narrow, bumpy (and ofter muddy) dirt road with vertical drops of up to 1,000 m, enjoying spectacular views of green rain-forest valleys and peaks is an experience hard to match.
This road was declared in 1994 "The World's Most Dangerous Road" by the World Bank, and there's a reason for it. There are dozens of fatal accidents every year (our guide told us one every 2 weeks) and all the crosses placed along the road are a disturbing and constant reminder of how many people have lost their lives here. The main cause for that tragic record is that the road is extremely narrow (at some points I don't think it's wider than 3m) and land-slides on the cliff-side are frequent due to the various waterfalls that drop on the road. In fact, it's the only road in Bolivia where you drive on the left, so drivers can see how close the are to the cliff when they are maneuvering to avoid on-coming traffic.
Unfortunately, when we rode down the road it was raining and foggy, so we could't enjoy the magnificent views of the cliffs. Although you could also say that luckily, it was raining and foggy and we could not see the drops of the cliffs! Anyway, that made it even more fun, riding on the mudd, crossing rivers and controlling the bike sliding on the turns. Spectacular!
After that thrilling experience we decided to relax for a couple days at the wonderful hotel Esmeralda at Coroico, escaping from the cold of the heights for the first time in many weeks and enjoying the swimming-pool, the sauna (well, I didn't get to use it but it was there) and the beautiful views of the valleys. That was without a doubt the best place I've slept in the whole trip, and also the best value-for-money (3,5 euros per night is a true bargain).
We intended to take a 10-hour jeep trip from there to the jungle, but unfortunately the roads where being blocked by demonstrators and when the blockade was finally over, a bridge collapsed. Ten people died the day before trying to cross through the river in a truck, so we had no alternative but to go up to La Paz by bus (on the most dangerous road in the world, something I wanted to avoid by all means) and then fly to the jungle. So if you think going down this road on a bike was scary, I cannot describe what the return trip was like on a bus almost as wide as the entire road. On the bicycle you go as fast and as close to the cliff as you want (or as the oncoming traffic lets you), but in a bus you are no longer in control (I'm affraid not even the driver was in control all time). And this time there was no fog to hide the drop.
I was sitting at a window on the cliff side and I can tell you that many times, when I looked out the window, I could see the vertical drop, but not the road or where the drop ended. That was, without a doubt, the "most dangerous ride of my trip".
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
The white city
After a ride in the fastest bus south of the Panama Channel (it leaned so much in every turn that many times I thought we were going to tip over), we arrived to Sucre which, unknown to many (including myself), is the official capital of Bolivia.
We arrived in Sucre, without planning it, for the 25th of May Independence festivities (a great time for a Spaniard to be there :) so we were hoping for a wonderful spectacle, dances, music, fire-works... Unfortunately, all we got was three days of school kids, army forces, policemen, politics and basically everybody in town parading non-stop on the streets to the bit of drums and trumpets. And, unfortunately as well, we chose a hotel located on the main parading street, so we had to fight the crowds everytime we wanted to get out (and wait for the owner to come everytime we wanted to get in, but that's a different story).
Most people will tell you there's not much to see or do in Sucre, and that's true, but the city is so nice and relaxing that those same people will end up staying there 3 or 4 days (at least, we did).
Sucre's center is very nice, with green plazas full of flowers, beautiful buildings and colonial churches and little streets filled with white houses that resemble those on the little Andalucian villages in Spain. In fact, all Sucre's center is white: houses, theaters, museums, churches, public buldings,... (yeap, you probably guessed that's why it's called "the white city"). And if you add to that how clean everything is and the fact that most people dress in Western clothes, it's easy to forget you're still in Bolivia (specially after having visited Uyuni).
When the parades finally let us, we visited the dinosaur footprints in Cal Orck'o (one of the most important sites of this type in the world), went to the mirador of La Recoleta to enjoy a beautiful view of Sucre (some friends told me they had stayed there for 2 days!! We stayed for around an hour) and enjoyed some excellent Bolivian traditional music on the open-sky theater, standing up at midnight (it was the night from the 24th to the 25th) to listen to and sing the Bolivian national anthem, to celebrate that a hundred and something years ago they finally got rid of those nasty Spaniards. I don't need to explain to you how ironic it was for me to take an active part in this celebration :)
We also decided to go to the classical football match Bolivar-Stronger (both teams from La Paz, but played in Sucre for the festivities). We chose to cheer for Stronger, since Bolivar was the favorite (and no Atlético de Madrid fan would ever cheer for a favorite :) and, after the anthem-singing the night before, I decided it would be pushing it too much to support a team that beared the name of an independence revolution leader :) Since we were the only "gringos" at the game (and were wearing quite obvious Stronger memorabilia) we were received with strong hishing by the Bolivar fans when we entered the stadium, but with a big applause by the Stronger supporters, who immediately offered us to seat next to them. Needless to say, Stronger beat Bolivar 1-2 (not a coincidence that we were there :) and we proudly walked home with our brown and yellow scarfs and flags.
Before the game we visited the "chorizo" (spicy sausage) fair, where we tried one of Sucre's specialities in a place with quite worrying hygenic conditions (so deficient we decided to enjoy our "chorizo" as a "bocadillo", sandwich, rather than using plates). Luckily, none of those of us that dared to try this delicacy (very tasty, by the way) suffered any unpleasant secondary effects on the following days.
We did some other unusual stuff, such as racing each other around Bolivar Park with some go-karts we rented, but who hasn't done that when visiting Bolivia! :)
However, my favorite anecdote in Sucre was visiting the market. Not only I had there the best peanut-butter cookies I've had in my life (and for a ridiculous price), but we also had a unexpected encounter with the kids working there. One little girl asked me to take a picture of her, and right after I showed it to her (one of the advantages of digital photography) we were surrounded by 10 or more kids asking me to take their picture. They posed in front of their fruit stands, behind them, with their friends, with other kids that walked by,... And they couldn't stop laughing when they saw their faces, or some of their friends' gestures. I think they had a great time (we certainly did), as it was like playtime break in the middle of their working day.
I found Bolivian kids extremely cute and sweet, specially considering their tough lives combining (or too often substituting for) work and going to school. It is amazing how little it takes to make them smile and have a good time, sometimes just talking to them with a funny accent or, as my case in the market, showing them their own picture. Quite different from the increasingly spoiled Western kids of our societies, who need to have the latest Play Station or the most expensive Nike shoes to be happy. Truly something to think about.
Our last day in Sucre we visited the cemetery, a surreal mix of Buenos Aires' mausoleums and piled colorful graves, some of them equiped with the latest gadgets, such as awnings and music boxes. Unlike the kids in the market, those working here (they offer stairs to the people that need to reach the highest graves) did not want to be photographed. Perhaps they feared that if someone saw that picture they could lose their jobs. But even so, they were also very nice and curious about us, so we sit down and chatted with them for a while.
And finally, after 4 wonderful days in Sucre, we decided to take a 15-hour night bus to La Paz. For some reason Bolivian buses don't have heaters or toilets, and I can tell you that a 15-hr long bus ride on a winter night along the Altiplano at 4,000 m on those conditions is not a truly enjoyable experience.
We arrived in Sucre, without planning it, for the 25th of May Independence festivities (a great time for a Spaniard to be there :) so we were hoping for a wonderful spectacle, dances, music, fire-works... Unfortunately, all we got was three days of school kids, army forces, policemen, politics and basically everybody in town parading non-stop on the streets to the bit of drums and trumpets. And, unfortunately as well, we chose a hotel located on the main parading street, so we had to fight the crowds everytime we wanted to get out (and wait for the owner to come everytime we wanted to get in, but that's a different story).
Most people will tell you there's not much to see or do in Sucre, and that's true, but the city is so nice and relaxing that those same people will end up staying there 3 or 4 days (at least, we did).
Sucre's center is very nice, with green plazas full of flowers, beautiful buildings and colonial churches and little streets filled with white houses that resemble those on the little Andalucian villages in Spain. In fact, all Sucre's center is white: houses, theaters, museums, churches, public buldings,... (yeap, you probably guessed that's why it's called "the white city"). And if you add to that how clean everything is and the fact that most people dress in Western clothes, it's easy to forget you're still in Bolivia (specially after having visited Uyuni).
When the parades finally let us, we visited the dinosaur footprints in Cal Orck'o (one of the most important sites of this type in the world), went to the mirador of La Recoleta to enjoy a beautiful view of Sucre (some friends told me they had stayed there for 2 days!! We stayed for around an hour) and enjoyed some excellent Bolivian traditional music on the open-sky theater, standing up at midnight (it was the night from the 24th to the 25th) to listen to and sing the Bolivian national anthem, to celebrate that a hundred and something years ago they finally got rid of those nasty Spaniards. I don't need to explain to you how ironic it was for me to take an active part in this celebration :)
We also decided to go to the classical football match Bolivar-Stronger (both teams from La Paz, but played in Sucre for the festivities). We chose to cheer for Stronger, since Bolivar was the favorite (and no Atlético de Madrid fan would ever cheer for a favorite :) and, after the anthem-singing the night before, I decided it would be pushing it too much to support a team that beared the name of an independence revolution leader :) Since we were the only "gringos" at the game (and were wearing quite obvious Stronger memorabilia) we were received with strong hishing by the Bolivar fans when we entered the stadium, but with a big applause by the Stronger supporters, who immediately offered us to seat next to them. Needless to say, Stronger beat Bolivar 1-2 (not a coincidence that we were there :) and we proudly walked home with our brown and yellow scarfs and flags.
Before the game we visited the "chorizo" (spicy sausage) fair, where we tried one of Sucre's specialities in a place with quite worrying hygenic conditions (so deficient we decided to enjoy our "chorizo" as a "bocadillo", sandwich, rather than using plates). Luckily, none of those of us that dared to try this delicacy (very tasty, by the way) suffered any unpleasant secondary effects on the following days.
We did some other unusual stuff, such as racing each other around Bolivar Park with some go-karts we rented, but who hasn't done that when visiting Bolivia! :)
However, my favorite anecdote in Sucre was visiting the market. Not only I had there the best peanut-butter cookies I've had in my life (and for a ridiculous price), but we also had a unexpected encounter with the kids working there. One little girl asked me to take a picture of her, and right after I showed it to her (one of the advantages of digital photography) we were surrounded by 10 or more kids asking me to take their picture. They posed in front of their fruit stands, behind them, with their friends, with other kids that walked by,... And they couldn't stop laughing when they saw their faces, or some of their friends' gestures. I think they had a great time (we certainly did), as it was like playtime break in the middle of their working day.
I found Bolivian kids extremely cute and sweet, specially considering their tough lives combining (or too often substituting for) work and going to school. It is amazing how little it takes to make them smile and have a good time, sometimes just talking to them with a funny accent or, as my case in the market, showing them their own picture. Quite different from the increasingly spoiled Western kids of our societies, who need to have the latest Play Station or the most expensive Nike shoes to be happy. Truly something to think about.
Our last day in Sucre we visited the cemetery, a surreal mix of Buenos Aires' mausoleums and piled colorful graves, some of them equiped with the latest gadgets, such as awnings and music boxes. Unlike the kids in the market, those working here (they offer stairs to the people that need to reach the highest graves) did not want to be photographed. Perhaps they feared that if someone saw that picture they could lose their jobs. But even so, they were also very nice and curious about us, so we sit down and chatted with them for a while.
And finally, after 4 wonderful days in Sucre, we decided to take a 15-hour night bus to La Paz. For some reason Bolivian buses don't have heaters or toilets, and I can tell you that a 15-hr long bus ride on a winter night along the Altiplano at 4,000 m on those conditions is not a truly enjoyable experience.
Thursday, July 08, 2004
The silver mines of Potosí
There are 455 mines in Cerro Rico, the famous peak where the Spaniards first found silver over 400 years ago. Currently, 120 of them are still being exploited by 7,000 miners grouped on about 50 cooperatives. So I don't think it's exaggerating to imagine the interior of this mountain as a giant Gruyère cheese.
Knowing that there are 7,000 miners working on 120 uncoordinated mines using dynamite inside the mountain that you are about to visit is not precisely a calming fact. I have the feeling that sooner or later Cerro Rico will collapse under its own weight, as no engineer supervises these explosions and it's impossible for each cooperative to know the direction on which the neighboring mines are expanding. In fact, I recently read that 10 years ago an American geological survey predicted that the mountain would collapse in 7 years, so my prediction is not excesively pesimistic.
Some people claim that visiting the mines is a perverse type of tourism than makes an attraction out of people working in horrendous conditions. While I could understand their opinion, I think that visiting the mines actually makes a lot of people (like me) more sensitive to the tough conditions that miners face everyday. In fact, I have the feeling that most tours are designed with that solely purpose (I'm sure ours was), and nobody that has visited the mines will tell you that is an enjoyable experience or something they would like to do again. Additionaly, most agencies donate 15% of their income to the miners themselves and all visitors buy presents to the miners, so I think that if these tours affect the miners in any way is positively.
The first thing we did when we were picked up by our guides, former miners themselves, was head to the Miners Market, where miners buy their own supplies. There you can find such diverse things as head torches, rechargable batteries, helmets, soft drinks, coca leaves, 96 degrees alcohol (that's 192 proof!!) and... DYNAMITE!! For a dollar you can buy a stick of dynamite, a detonator and a 2-meter long fuse. Coming from a country that has suffered terrorism for so many years, it was quite shocking to discover how easy it was to purchase this material here.
Following our guides' advice of what miners needed the most, we bought coca leaves, soft drinks and, of course, dynamite (the Argentinian one, that was of better quality). Before leaving the market we had a sip of that 96º alcohol and all I can say is that the label, that read "buen gusto" (good taste), seemed to me like a really sick joke.
Nowadays silver is no longer found in pure state, so what the miners extract are compound minerals whose basic elements are separated using "nature-friendly" chemicals such as cyanide or sulfuric acid (I don't need to tell you how healthy the rivers around Potosí are). The main minerals obtained after the chemical process are silver, tin, lead and copper, which are then exported as powder to other countries for further processing.
After visiting one of these "ingenios" (factories) that separate the minerals and walking around toxic chemicals driping over crushed rocks with no protection at all (a bit disturbing experience) and hearing some fine examples of simplistic victimism regarding global trade ("big countries set the prices of minerals to screw up poor countries"), we headed for the mine of Candelaria. Candelaria is around 4,300 m. high and dates from the Colonial times.
We chewed coca leaves to help prevent altitude sickness and entered what I though was a quite low gallery, but would later discover that it was the largest one. We stopped at a museum inside the mine that contained some interesting information together with some shocking (and, in my opinion, completely untrue) facts.
For example, 8 million people are claimed to be killed by the Spaniards in Potosí. Taking the city's peak population (160,000 by the XVI century) and assuming a generation gap of 20 years, it would mean that the Spaniards killed every single person in Potosí for over 1,000 years. Or otherwise, if you consider that at the peak time there were 15,000 miners working on Cerro Rico and that Spain exploited the mines for less than 300 years, it would mean that every miner died (or was killed by the Spaniards, to use the same words as the museum) after only 6 months of work. But hey, why let logic or statistics ruin a wonderful Spain-bashing claim.
Anyway, after the museum the real fun begun. We started the visit of the mine, and I must say that is the most claustrophobic experience I've ever had. We entered 1 km. inside the mine, and descended 100 m to the last level (level 4). We had to crawl on less than one-meter high tunnels (remaining with your hands on the ground if the person before you stopped), descend through slippery holes where you couldn't see the end and had little to grab to, run away from the trolleys that the miners use to transport the minerals (the galleries are very narrow, so when you sense a trolley is coming you have to escape to a wider area before you get run over). At level 4, we had to pass through a hole so narrow that I had to leave my backbag behind. And at the other side of the tunnel things didn't improve much: I had to lay on my back, having the celing of the room 20 cm. above my nose. I was not claustrophobic before, but I was for the entire visit to the mine.
Miners work in 10-hour shifts (sometime double) and the eat nothing all day, they simply chew coca leaves (good for altitude and to eliminate the sense of hunger), drink soft drinks to preven dehydratation and to get the sugar they need for their work, and at the end of the day or before their day off, have a sip of the terribly strong 96º alcohol. Before drinking or eating anything, they spill part of it on the ground to offer it to the Pacha Mama (Mother Earth) and the Tío (the Devil that habits inside the mine).
The conditions the miners stand during their work are truly extreme. 2-ton trolleys are pushed by hand, holes for dynamite are digged with hammers and 50-kg sacks are filled with shovels and lifted by a manual polley to the higher levels. An average miner can load up to 500 50-kg sacks using just his shovel in a single day. Add to that the thin air at 4,300 m, the high temperatures of over 30°C, the narrow tunnels, the complete darkness, the toxic particles floating in the air and having no food (just coca leaves) for the entire 10-hour shift. No electricity, no oxygen pushed in from outside, no mechanical aids. These are the conditions that miners, some of them only 16 years old, face every single day.
Believe me, just walking up and down those galleries for 3 and a half hours and seeing the miners work was a truly disturbing experience. The fatigue (and we had done nothing but walking), the narrow spaces, the lack of air, the high temperatures and the dusty atmosphere made breathing truly difficult. When we started climbing up, we had to stop every few meters simply to recover our breath, which at certain moments I felt I would be unable to do. I have never been happier that when I finally saw the day-light after walking along a seemingly endless first-level gallery.
Although an extremely interesting and learning experience, the visit to the Candelaria mine has been the only thing I've done in this trip that I'm completely certain I will never do again.
Knowing that there are 7,000 miners working on 120 uncoordinated mines using dynamite inside the mountain that you are about to visit is not precisely a calming fact. I have the feeling that sooner or later Cerro Rico will collapse under its own weight, as no engineer supervises these explosions and it's impossible for each cooperative to know the direction on which the neighboring mines are expanding. In fact, I recently read that 10 years ago an American geological survey predicted that the mountain would collapse in 7 years, so my prediction is not excesively pesimistic.
Some people claim that visiting the mines is a perverse type of tourism than makes an attraction out of people working in horrendous conditions. While I could understand their opinion, I think that visiting the mines actually makes a lot of people (like me) more sensitive to the tough conditions that miners face everyday. In fact, I have the feeling that most tours are designed with that solely purpose (I'm sure ours was), and nobody that has visited the mines will tell you that is an enjoyable experience or something they would like to do again. Additionaly, most agencies donate 15% of their income to the miners themselves and all visitors buy presents to the miners, so I think that if these tours affect the miners in any way is positively.
The first thing we did when we were picked up by our guides, former miners themselves, was head to the Miners Market, where miners buy their own supplies. There you can find such diverse things as head torches, rechargable batteries, helmets, soft drinks, coca leaves, 96 degrees alcohol (that's 192 proof!!) and... DYNAMITE!! For a dollar you can buy a stick of dynamite, a detonator and a 2-meter long fuse. Coming from a country that has suffered terrorism for so many years, it was quite shocking to discover how easy it was to purchase this material here.
Following our guides' advice of what miners needed the most, we bought coca leaves, soft drinks and, of course, dynamite (the Argentinian one, that was of better quality). Before leaving the market we had a sip of that 96º alcohol and all I can say is that the label, that read "buen gusto" (good taste), seemed to me like a really sick joke.
Nowadays silver is no longer found in pure state, so what the miners extract are compound minerals whose basic elements are separated using "nature-friendly" chemicals such as cyanide or sulfuric acid (I don't need to tell you how healthy the rivers around Potosí are). The main minerals obtained after the chemical process are silver, tin, lead and copper, which are then exported as powder to other countries for further processing.
After visiting one of these "ingenios" (factories) that separate the minerals and walking around toxic chemicals driping over crushed rocks with no protection at all (a bit disturbing experience) and hearing some fine examples of simplistic victimism regarding global trade ("big countries set the prices of minerals to screw up poor countries"), we headed for the mine of Candelaria. Candelaria is around 4,300 m. high and dates from the Colonial times.
We chewed coca leaves to help prevent altitude sickness and entered what I though was a quite low gallery, but would later discover that it was the largest one. We stopped at a museum inside the mine that contained some interesting information together with some shocking (and, in my opinion, completely untrue) facts.
For example, 8 million people are claimed to be killed by the Spaniards in Potosí. Taking the city's peak population (160,000 by the XVI century) and assuming a generation gap of 20 years, it would mean that the Spaniards killed every single person in Potosí for over 1,000 years. Or otherwise, if you consider that at the peak time there were 15,000 miners working on Cerro Rico and that Spain exploited the mines for less than 300 years, it would mean that every miner died (or was killed by the Spaniards, to use the same words as the museum) after only 6 months of work. But hey, why let logic or statistics ruin a wonderful Spain-bashing claim.
Anyway, after the museum the real fun begun. We started the visit of the mine, and I must say that is the most claustrophobic experience I've ever had. We entered 1 km. inside the mine, and descended 100 m to the last level (level 4). We had to crawl on less than one-meter high tunnels (remaining with your hands on the ground if the person before you stopped), descend through slippery holes where you couldn't see the end and had little to grab to, run away from the trolleys that the miners use to transport the minerals (the galleries are very narrow, so when you sense a trolley is coming you have to escape to a wider area before you get run over). At level 4, we had to pass through a hole so narrow that I had to leave my backbag behind. And at the other side of the tunnel things didn't improve much: I had to lay on my back, having the celing of the room 20 cm. above my nose. I was not claustrophobic before, but I was for the entire visit to the mine.
Miners work in 10-hour shifts (sometime double) and the eat nothing all day, they simply chew coca leaves (good for altitude and to eliminate the sense of hunger), drink soft drinks to preven dehydratation and to get the sugar they need for their work, and at the end of the day or before their day off, have a sip of the terribly strong 96º alcohol. Before drinking or eating anything, they spill part of it on the ground to offer it to the Pacha Mama (Mother Earth) and the Tío (the Devil that habits inside the mine).
The conditions the miners stand during their work are truly extreme. 2-ton trolleys are pushed by hand, holes for dynamite are digged with hammers and 50-kg sacks are filled with shovels and lifted by a manual polley to the higher levels. An average miner can load up to 500 50-kg sacks using just his shovel in a single day. Add to that the thin air at 4,300 m, the high temperatures of over 30°C, the narrow tunnels, the complete darkness, the toxic particles floating in the air and having no food (just coca leaves) for the entire 10-hour shift. No electricity, no oxygen pushed in from outside, no mechanical aids. These are the conditions that miners, some of them only 16 years old, face every single day.
Believe me, just walking up and down those galleries for 3 and a half hours and seeing the miners work was a truly disturbing experience. The fatigue (and we had done nothing but walking), the narrow spaces, the lack of air, the high temperatures and the dusty atmosphere made breathing truly difficult. When we started climbing up, we had to stop every few meters simply to recover our breath, which at certain moments I felt I would be unable to do. I have never been happier that when I finally saw the day-light after walking along a seemingly endless first-level gallery.
Although an extremely interesting and learning experience, the visit to the Candelaria mine has been the only thing I've done in this trip that I'm completely certain I will never do again.
Saturday, July 03, 2004
The Jewel of the old Spanish Empire
The bus that was to take us to Potosí seemed a lot nicer than what I had imagine. Small, but clean, with nice reclinable seats and no sheep or chickens on board, as I had heard in many stories. The only difference from other buses I had taken was that luggage was place on top, and not underneath, and that it was considerable higher, probably to get across the muddy roads when the rainy season kicks in (only 5% of all Bolivian roads are paved). It looked like a 4x4 bus.
But of course, those were my first impressions. As soon as we started the trip, some of the stereotypes of Bolivian road travel turned real: people would jump on and off the bus at any point (sometimes without waiting for the bus to stop) until even the aisles were completely filled, we had to change a flat tyre 20 minutes after begining our trip and we had to leave the bus about 10 km. before reaching Potosi because the teachers (yes, them again) had blocked the road with rocks.
So we took our bags and walked with them across the blockade which was surprisingly not hostile to pedestrians. Once on the other side, we had to take a taxi (shared with as many people as the driver managed to fit in) to the city.
Unfortunately, our driver seemed to be exclusively dedicated to the "bus terminal-blockade-bus terminal" route (a quite profitable one, I believe), so he refused to take us to our hostel and we had to take another taxi that had to take several detours around Potosí's streets to avoid further protests inside the city.
But despite of our arrival incidents, Potosí is a much nicer city than the dull and depressing one I expected to find. The streets were very lively and packed with people, full of architectonic jewels and there are quite a few nice places to stay and eat, where you can try the delicious grilled llama steaks, as I did. However, the fact that Potosí is the highest city in the world (4,070 m), interesting as it is, it also means that walking along the steep streets is extremely tiring and that it gets quite cold, specially now that the winter has begun.
When the silver mines were at full production, Potosí was the New York of the Spanish Empire. It was the largest city in the continent, and even larger than the main European metropolis, such as Paris or Seville. In fact, Potosí is probably one of the few cities in the world that had more habitants 300 years ago than it does today. In Spain, "vale un Potosí" (it's worth a Potosí) is still used today to refer to something of outstanding value.
The heritage from that period is reflected on the large number of fine colonial buildings spreaded throughout the city (UNESCO has catalogued over 2,000 of them), which make Potosí resemble some of the most monumental cities in Southern Spain (Úbeda or Trujillo come to mind).
Potosí also has one of the few museums I truly enjoyed visiting (those that know me well know I'm not very fond of these "agglomerated collections of artistic items"): La Casa de la Moneda (The Mint House), claimed to be a replica of Spain's Escorial Monastery. Putting aside the simplistic and theatrical Spanish-bashing comments that you expect to get on any guided tour on this side of the continent (our guide said that "two bridges could be built from South-America to Madrid: one with the bones of the people murdered by the Spaniards and another one with the gold stolen by them"), the visit was quite interested. We went through the whole old coin production process, from the melting of silver in standard ingots to the minting of the coins. We saw the ovens, the ingot-thinnering machines (brought from Spain), the minting tools and even some of the safety trunks used by the Spaniards to transport the coins, some with truly ingenious mechanisms.
The funny aspect of the museum is that since they seemed to have plenty of room left, they decided to incorporate a few additional items: old Indian skulls, two natural mummies of Spanish babies, all the religious items of one church that had been closed and, my personal favorite, the skeleton of a whale donated by a German scientist.
Our guide finished the tour mentioning a quite ironic fact: Potosí used to produce coins for the Spanish Empire, but now it is Spain that manufactures all Bolivian coins. It's incredible how twisted history can be.
Another amusing fact about Potosí (well, Bolivia in general) is the public transportation system. In Potosí, there are more buses (vans, actually) than private cars. Each of them belongs to a different person, so competition is fierce even within the same route.
Each van is equiped with a little kid (usually a family member of the driver) that shouts the destinations of the bus in a very loud and unintelligible way (even for me, a native Spanish speaker). I ignore the real reason for this practice as the destinations are clearly written on the front of the van, but my guess is that it's either to beat competitors (among all the noise, the louder screamer has a better chance of you noticing him) or to inform those passengers that can't read (I don't know the illiteracy level among Bolivians, but I presume is significantly higher than in most neighboring countries). But whatever the reason, I can asure you is that it's really annoying, specially at rush hour.
But despite all the attractions I just mentioned, the main reason why most travellers visit Potosí is a different one: visiting the old silver mines. And, of course, I was one of them. But that experience was so overwhelming that it deserves a posting on its own.
But of course, those were my first impressions. As soon as we started the trip, some of the stereotypes of Bolivian road travel turned real: people would jump on and off the bus at any point (sometimes without waiting for the bus to stop) until even the aisles were completely filled, we had to change a flat tyre 20 minutes after begining our trip and we had to leave the bus about 10 km. before reaching Potosi because the teachers (yes, them again) had blocked the road with rocks.
So we took our bags and walked with them across the blockade which was surprisingly not hostile to pedestrians. Once on the other side, we had to take a taxi (shared with as many people as the driver managed to fit in) to the city.
Unfortunately, our driver seemed to be exclusively dedicated to the "bus terminal-blockade-bus terminal" route (a quite profitable one, I believe), so he refused to take us to our hostel and we had to take another taxi that had to take several detours around Potosí's streets to avoid further protests inside the city.
But despite of our arrival incidents, Potosí is a much nicer city than the dull and depressing one I expected to find. The streets were very lively and packed with people, full of architectonic jewels and there are quite a few nice places to stay and eat, where you can try the delicious grilled llama steaks, as I did. However, the fact that Potosí is the highest city in the world (4,070 m), interesting as it is, it also means that walking along the steep streets is extremely tiring and that it gets quite cold, specially now that the winter has begun.
When the silver mines were at full production, Potosí was the New York of the Spanish Empire. It was the largest city in the continent, and even larger than the main European metropolis, such as Paris or Seville. In fact, Potosí is probably one of the few cities in the world that had more habitants 300 years ago than it does today. In Spain, "vale un Potosí" (it's worth a Potosí) is still used today to refer to something of outstanding value.
The heritage from that period is reflected on the large number of fine colonial buildings spreaded throughout the city (UNESCO has catalogued over 2,000 of them), which make Potosí resemble some of the most monumental cities in Southern Spain (Úbeda or Trujillo come to mind).
Potosí also has one of the few museums I truly enjoyed visiting (those that know me well know I'm not very fond of these "agglomerated collections of artistic items"): La Casa de la Moneda (The Mint House), claimed to be a replica of Spain's Escorial Monastery. Putting aside the simplistic and theatrical Spanish-bashing comments that you expect to get on any guided tour on this side of the continent (our guide said that "two bridges could be built from South-America to Madrid: one with the bones of the people murdered by the Spaniards and another one with the gold stolen by them"), the visit was quite interested. We went through the whole old coin production process, from the melting of silver in standard ingots to the minting of the coins. We saw the ovens, the ingot-thinnering machines (brought from Spain), the minting tools and even some of the safety trunks used by the Spaniards to transport the coins, some with truly ingenious mechanisms.
The funny aspect of the museum is that since they seemed to have plenty of room left, they decided to incorporate a few additional items: old Indian skulls, two natural mummies of Spanish babies, all the religious items of one church that had been closed and, my personal favorite, the skeleton of a whale donated by a German scientist.
Our guide finished the tour mentioning a quite ironic fact: Potosí used to produce coins for the Spanish Empire, but now it is Spain that manufactures all Bolivian coins. It's incredible how twisted history can be.
Another amusing fact about Potosí (well, Bolivia in general) is the public transportation system. In Potosí, there are more buses (vans, actually) than private cars. Each of them belongs to a different person, so competition is fierce even within the same route.
Each van is equiped with a little kid (usually a family member of the driver) that shouts the destinations of the bus in a very loud and unintelligible way (even for me, a native Spanish speaker). I ignore the real reason for this practice as the destinations are clearly written on the front of the van, but my guess is that it's either to beat competitors (among all the noise, the louder screamer has a better chance of you noticing him) or to inform those passengers that can't read (I don't know the illiteracy level among Bolivians, but I presume is significantly higher than in most neighboring countries). But whatever the reason, I can asure you is that it's really annoying, specially at rush hour.
But despite all the attractions I just mentioned, the main reason why most travellers visit Potosí is a different one: visiting the old silver mines. And, of course, I was one of them. But that experience was so overwhelming that it deserves a posting on its own.
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