Sucre

Sucre is the political capital of Bolivia, with lots of museums and other city attractions. La Paz actually holds the government, but the country was founded here, so I guess they are keeping it that way for old times' sake. It's a nice enough city with some beautiful buildings but it will be good to move on to La Paz later today.

Potosi

We spent five nights in Potosi - more than planned because there is currently a nationwide strike, from transportation to medical care. Potosi is a 500 year old silver mine and it was the gem of the Spanish empire - the richest mine in world history and the site of some of the greatest suffering in human history. More than 8 million workers and slaves have died in the mine they call "the mountain that eats men." It is still active but just barely - some geologists have said that it will run out of silver and perhaps begin to collapse within 10 years. It has already dropped about 500 meters in height from when the Spaniards began to mine it intensively more than 500 years ago. Today it is mined by cooperatives, using extremely primitive methods in marginal mines at extraordinary damage to their health, breathing in arsenic and exploring unscientific veins with dynamite lit by hand.

We went on a tour through one of the mines. The opening passageway had been constructed by the Spaniards using arched tunnels made of stone. As we progressed further into it, the method of digging had changed to jackhammers and dynamite because it is much cheaper and that particular mine wouldn't be profitable with more expensive methods. Nothing was automated except for air tubes pressurized to power the jackhammers. The air was stultifying and it felt ominous. We brought the workers alcohol and dynamite to compensate for our intrusion (they also get a share of the profit, we were told). Our guides had worked in the cooperative before, so there was an understanding and camaraderie between them that made me feel like less of an obstruction for being there. One of the guides, Juan Carlos, and I spent some time talking. He is 33 years old and worked in the mines from age 20 to 25 as his father had. He quit because all of his friends died of lung cancer, as his father had at age 45. When his father was dying in the hospital, he would see many family friends there as well, but almost every time there was one less. The miners work long hours and drink extreme amounts, sometimes inside the mine. Their favorite drink is 96% alcohol and $2 for half a liter. Juan Carlos told me that when he began working in the mines, he thought it was extremely stupid to drink so much, often blacking out. After some time working there, he understood and joined them. It was very sobering to talk to a man not much older than me who is resigned to dying soon (he has not been diagnosed with anything, but the mines are so terrible that he has to think that way). I'll never look at a piece of silver the same way again.

Journey to Uyuni

We booked a 3 day trip from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile to Uyuni, Bolivia. There were six of us and a Bolivian driver (a real maniac named Fabio) in a 4 wheel drive jeep and some mountain passes for the trip. As ever, the scenery was breathtaking - lakes at 4500m or more with flamingos, desert vistas made famous in paintings by Dali, hot springs, geysers, and the knowledge that you are traveling through one of the highest, remotest, and least habitable places on earth. When we got to the border, we had to give our passports to our driver so we could pay the $140 entry fee (special for Americans as part of reciprocity) in Uyuni - they didn't have the premises to do it at the border crossing. After we handed our passports over, the driver of the original bus (we switched vehicles after crossing the border) warned us that we are not very welcome here and be careful to use the "Usted" form (the conjugation in Spanish that shows respect to elders and officials) and be careful to use our pleases and thank yous. He was cool - just warning us of the realities of a gringo traveling through Bolivia. For some perspective, the president, Evo Morales, is a close ally of Hugo Chavez and nationalizes major companies on a near annual basis. Bolivia is the poorest South American country and us gringos are blamed for a great deal of it, regardless of actual facts. After the border crossing, I did notice a definite drop in overt affability among the people I interacted with going about daily life - navigating the street, buying things and so forth. However, further away from the border that impression has slipped away - they are not overtly friendly, and there is normally a sense of disappointment among people after they hear that I'm from the States, but that exists everywhere in Latin America and can be overcome. It helps immensely to speak Spanish pretty well. Bolivia is the most indigenous of Latin American countries, with over 70% of the population classified as natives. Many speak Quechua as their primary language and Spanish as a secondary language, if at all. For example, today, our waitress at a restaurant had a lot of trouble understanding us (we are nearly positive that it wasn't our Spanish but hers). Another very noticeable difference after the border-crossing is the poverty. The nice, paved Chilean road turned into a bumpy dirt path right at the border. People are noticeably shorter and show more age lines in their faces from lives of hardship. They also look distinct from most people in Chile and Argentina because of their ancestry - this is a land still deeply connected to the Inca and their ancestors, whereas most indigenous tribes further south were wiped out and were never as populous or as organized to begin with. The altitude here is extreme. We haven't dropped below 3700 meters at any point (10, 500 feet) and we've gone all the way up to 5000m in the car. At that altitude, even after having acclimated for more than a week in San Pedro de Atacama at 2500m, my energy sapped and I began to get a headache. The altitude creates many extremes in temperature, wind, and sun. Any one place can range from boiling hot in the day to well below freezing at night with some of the strongest doses of UV rays in the world (someone told me that La Paz has the highest doses of UV of any city in the world). We reached Uyuni a few days ago, where there is the largest salt field on earth (Salar de Uyuni). It is 10, 500 km2 and up to 9m in depth, supplying salt for the entire country. For some reason, cameras can't capture perspective of the salt field, so we had some fun with the pictures. After that, we packed off to Potosi.