Leaving Bolivia

Who knew how time flies. Yesterday morning we arrived on a night bus at our final destination on this trip: Argentina. We are now in the northern city of Salta, our heads somewhat spinning from the enormous difference already apparent between here and Bolivia, where we spent the whole of the past month.

On our last day in Bolivia, we took a gorgeous hike in the cactus-studded canyons around Tupiza after our hardcore week of jeep adventuring and got to reflect on the country we were leaving behind. I feel like we experienced a great cross-section of Bolivia; we navigated the teeming streets of La Paz during a political referendum, camped on the riverbed in the Amazon basin, crawled into the mines of Potosí, witnessed the extreme simplicity of rural life, and watched the sun rise over the world´s largest salt flat.

The country is at once breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly unfortunate. Consistently poor political management after years of greedy colonization means that the country, so rich in natural resources, has not been able to reap the benefits of its situation and as a result the day to day life of the vast majority of its inhabitants consists of little more than getting by.

The people of Bolivia are warm but also very direct, and I have never witnessed such hard workers as the people of this country, always without complaint. There is hardly ever a superfluous ingredient to life in Bolivia - rarely did we come across any level of luxury or frivolity (outside of the major cities). The only paint on the mud-brick houses consists of political opinion, and I left Bolivia extremely humbled at the stark contrast between the quality of life of the Bolivian compared with my own expectations and hopes of what my future will consist of. It´s great when your surroundings cause you to step outside of your own skin, and I think I´ll be thinking on these things for a while to come. Bye for now, Bolivia.

Notes from Underground

Potosí is a chilly, pretty city in the central highlands of Bolivia and one which has infomed the history and development of pretty much the entire rest of the country since its foundation in 1545 when silver was found in Cerro Rico (Rich Hill), which looms over the city and still provides jobs for the locals.

The history of Cerro Rico is at once mind boggling and tragic. The mountain´s ore funded the growth and development of the entire country, not to mention the Spanish empire who enslaved not only millions of locals but imported millions of African slaves to help extract the silver. Many of the major cities in Bolivia, including the capital Sucre and de facto capital La Paz were either planted or grew largely as a response to the Potosí boom. Now most of the silver has dried up but miners still work, beginning as young as 8 years old, pulling 12-24 hour shifts deep in the mountain and extracting barely enough silver, zinc, copper or bronze to live.

We decided to take a trip down into the mines to see the history and secret life of this city up-close and personal. About half way through our adventure as we were crawling on our bellies, breathing in toxic sulphuric gases we did question the sanity of our idea, but it was nonetheless one of the most memorable and moving experiences of our trip so far.

Our guide was an ex-miner and told us that for the majority of the illiterate, non Spanish-speaking locals in the area mining is the only option for work, despite the certainty of a very premature and painful death from lung cancer and other poisonings. When I asked if our guide too suffered from lung cancer as a result of his time in the mines, he shrugged and replied "of course." As we descended into the mines we passed even teenagers making their living and were able to offer them gifts of drinks, coca leaves and dynamite (which they have to purchase themselves for their work). The miners work in truly unbelievable conditions; toxic air, extreme heat, and they eat no food during their shift - they only chew coca leaves (and lots of them!) which boosts energy and keeps pain and fatigue at bay.

It was a sometimes scary and ultimately sobering experience to see the working mines and to realise that for many, this is their only choice in life. It is estimated that to date, 8 million people have died on Cerro Rico.

The Travelling Heirarchy

One thing you quickly recognise when travelling are the different types travellers accompanying you around the standard South American ports of tourist call. At one end of the scale you have your wannabe hippies - generally drop-outs of life and clothed in the baggy stripy trousers known locally as 'happy pants'. They seem to have 'settled' in a peaceful town making a living out of selling homemade jewelry, keep the local pot dealers in business and for some reason like to own puppies.

Next along you have the 'restless mid life crisis' traveller who, in the absence of a family or any more unrealised ambitions, packs it all in and disappears around the world for a year or so. These travellers are harmless and generally quite interesting though the 'been there done that' arguments you get when you put two of them in close proximity can be tiring.

The category that I think we place ourselves in is the 'we just want to be at one with you' category, eager to interact with the natives and be absorbed in the culture. We have met many wonderful people along the way who have embraced this philosophy including for some reason a lot of med students burnt out by school and taking time out to explore a use for their skills. We are of course the best and look down upon all the other travelling species.

Then there are the tour buses, large groups of middle aged people doing the tours in style and comfort. The buses tend to pick them up at their nice and sanitary 3 star hotel and drop them at the gates of the tourist traps with the minimal amount of interaction with anything in between. Both me and Millay agree that our biggest fear about getting old is not that we'll end up in a wheelchair or incontinent...... but in a tour bus.

Finally you have the bane of our lives which is the 'rich kids on tour' genus. Generally speaking these are gap year students just turned 18 with a mental age half of that on their passport. Usually named Alfred, Rupert or Lottie, South America for them is one big cheap beery night out with even cheaper drugs, you find them bouncing between the ex-pat western bars in the various major cities proclaiming various thinly veiled racist views about the locals and working out how to get more money off Daddy. Sad thing is that these are the people who will probably be running the country in 10 years time - you have been warned!