Bolivia - Sucre, Potosi and the road to Uyuni - 29th Jan to 3rd Feb

We really liked La Paz. The centre is small and compact and the people friendly and helpful. The street markets were full of interesting things and unusual things. we woud have liked to stayed longer but we must hit the road again.

The  next stage is the road to Sucre..have a look at this link Sucre

This city is the constitutional capital of Bolivia, La Paz being the Parliamentary and commercial capital. Sucre has a very different atmosphere to La Paz.

Where La Paz is bustling, Sucre is relaxed and laid back; where La Paz is congested and dirty, Sucre is clean and has few traffic jams.

Downtown Sucre...the day we arrived..quiet, relaxed..

oops look out its getting busier in the Plaza de 25th Mayo....

not many people to sell inflatables too.....

This relaxed atmoshere is refreshing after the hectic and chaotic pace of La Paz, we like these two sides to the twin capitals of this great little country. There is no need to rush through here just relax and see what Sucre has to offer.

There is a huge Cement factory here because of the rich gypsum deposits. A few years ago the factory workers uncovered a dinosaur footprint, and then another, until they realised that they had the richest source of dinosaur footprints ever discovered. These are mainly Titanosaur footprints (Heavyweights) The layers of gypsum have been uplifted into a vertical position purely for the convenience of the viewing public, .

Here's a section of the 750m long wall of gypsum.....

...and heres a close up of a snapshot in time...about 100 million years ago......

The park built around this natural wonder has a few representations in fibreglass of the dinosaurs who walked by here....

here are two locals from the Cretacious...

We stayed in Sucre for two days and enjoyed every leisurely minute of it, and if you want to learn Spanish then there are also plenty of Spanish schools here too.

Our next port of call was Potosi only 3.5 hours down the road; but remember that this is Bolivia and the road conditions can be variable.. between asphalt and dirt......but we needn't have worried it was tar all the way.




Potosi

Potosi couldn't be more different to Sucre, dirty (there was a strike by rubbish collectors when we arrived so the streets were full) and the colonial buildings are run down and dirty with traffic soot and years of neglect. But there is money here and a lot of it because the richest Silver deposit in the history of man is here in the mountain that looms over Potosi, Cerro Rico.. Potosi

Our taxi from the bus station, notice anything odd?.....the dasboard is on the right and the driver is on the left, you can just see his hand on the steering wheel; another Japanese import!!!!

...The town is full of run down colonial buildings or Casonas, which have large courtyards

The Spaniards came to Potosi looking for Gold but instead found Silver in such abundance that the mines are still worked to this day and still yield, not only Silver but Tin, Lead, and Copper.

There are 137 mines in Cerro Rico and 15,000 mine workers, who are paid up members of the cooperatives who supervise them, in effect all the miners are self employed. The states takes 5% of earnings; the cooperative owners get 20%, and the miners get 75% . There is no Health and Safety executive here, the mines are worked exactly as they were in colonial times, with pick, powder, hammer and brute force; the cost of a hydraulic drill is $10 dollars an hour. There are 32 Hummers (large American offroad vehicles) owned by mine workers in the town; all paid for with cash at an average cost of $150,000. You also don't need a license to buy or use dynamite, even children can buy it, if they have the 20 Bolivianos cost per stick.

We took a tour of a mine that has been worked for 400 years...

Siobhan reporting for work at the entrance of the mine....

El Tio, god of the mines..the workers offer him coca leaves, alcohol and cigarrettes in return for good luck. The miners also drink the alcohol (96% proof) and chew the coca to help them stave off hunger and to work longer, the cigarettes they use for lighting the fuses....

One of the less sought after minerals Copper oxide... note the timbers propping up the roof in this section...no hydraulic rams or steel pins to retain rock falls..

...the ore is trundled out in carts weighing around 1000kilos and ditched into each mine workers trough, a simple line of props indicates whose is whose. Samples are taken and analysed in local labs to establish the quality of the ore...

Cerro RIco....still hiding riches... there is gold in the flooded lower levels and yet more silver.. the slight kink in the top on the left is due to a collapse two weeks ago!!!

There is no doubt this is a dangerous place to work in, but the riches to be had are so attractive that doctors, teachers, civil servants as well as farmers flock here to make their fortune, but the human cost is huge. It is estmated that in nearly 500 years, 6 million people have perished as a result of working in this mountain. Between the time that the Spanards first used the local people for mining here and, when they left in 1809, 41000 metric tonnes of pure silver was exported from this mountain alone.

We walked out of the mine just as the cooperative workers finished a meeting to discuss the recent collapse at the top of the mountain, they decided to go back to work....

This was not your average visit to the Blue John Mines in Castleton, safe, unworked and twee in a touristy way. This was a very raw, active experience, Some workers live in the mine for a week at a time, never seeing daylight, drinking hard, chewing coca, fixing detonators with their teeth. Breathing the dust, loaded with toxic minerals, they are likely to live a rich,  but short life,

Next stop Uyuni, the salt pans and the wild beauty of the Bolivian Altiplanica......