!Have you heard of Potosí before? If not, you fall into 99.9% of the world's population with the same lack of knowledge; but we will now help enlighten you a bit. If you are familiar with this name you are likely to be Bolivian, Spanish, a tourist to Bolivia, or a miner. This town is famous for its mining of minerals. There is also a Spanish saying: "valer un potosí", "To be worth a potosí" (a fortune).
Potosí is said to be the highest city in the world – at 4,090 meters (13,480 ft). Although, we are not too certain about that: Somehow the entire Tibet region seems higher and many other cities in the Altiplano region.
The silver in Cerro Rico was very pure, some say up to 90% pure. But in the late 1700's, the silver was nearly depleted. The Spanish eventually retired the mine, but locals continue to extract ore from Cerro Rico for its silver, tin and lead deposits; although, only about 15% of what is extracted contains these metals. In fact, mining remains as the only real industry in Potosí. The landscape is rather austere and barren so everything needs to be trucked up to Potosí. So the whole town lives off the mines, and increasingly Mine Voyeurism Tourism now adds profits as well.
The mines are the single reason why Potosí is now on the tourist map. Although the city has been declared as a UNESCO world cultural heritage site (mainly for it's 80+ churches), it is the harsh life of the miners that attracts tourists – and us! It is a rare opportunity to witness this firsthand.
The miners organize themselves in co-op's which are usually composed of family related members. They use only the most primitive tools to extract the ore. Tourists are allowed into the working mines under the same dangerous conditions that the miners face every day – this is the real deal! No secured walkways, no special extra ventilation, and no secured ladders or handrails.
We signed up for a mine tour by a newly formed company called "The Real Deal". The agency is owned and operated by four former miners including Efrain Mamani who is highly recommended by Lonely Planet (for his 11 year's work at his previous company "Koala tours"). All four co-owners used to work for a big tour agency and decided to become independent and offer a more realistic tour of the mines.
Our guide is the famous Efrain who started to join his father and various other family members in the mine at age 13. Many of the miners start that early: "People here believe that school is only for girls, real men work in the mines," he explains. Sadly many of the miners also die young, in their 40's, from lung diseases such as silicosis.
We are first bused to a warehouse where we get our gear: rubber boots, miner's helmet with head lamp, nylon pants and coat. Optionally, we can buy a bandana to tie in front of our face to protect our lungs from the dust in the mine. This is pretty much the gear that the miners also use... Nothing more, probably even less.
Next, we stop at the miner's market to buy gifts for the miners. There is no entrance fee to the mine itself. Instead, tourists are expected to give practical gifts to the miners that they meet inside Cerro Rico. We buy a couple bottles of soft drinks, coca leaves and lots of dynamite. That's right, we buy dynamite at an open market. No need to show a passport, register, or anything like that: Just hand 15 Bolivianos ($2) to the shopkeeper and receive a stick of dynamite including fuse and nitrate beads, and that's all – we're now ready to blow something up!
for miners only!"
Efrain urges us not to buy cigarettes and alcohol for the miners: "They already live very unhealthy down there and we don't want to contribute to making it worse for them." We are impressed!
But he does show us what he calls "Whisky Boliviano"... In our country we call it rubbing alcohol, a 97% pure industrial alcohol. The miners actually drink this stuff; we will later learn why (at least one of the more logical reasons, other than getting drunk on the cheap).
Before we go to the mine, we stop at a processing plant where they crush the ore and throw it into chemical baths. All is extremely primitive and makeshift. The plant is nothing more than a shack with big pools of very toxic looking stuff. Some of the chemicals are cyanide and copper sulfate. The vapors are stinging in our eyes and safety gear is non existent.
"That doesn't smell good!"
Efrain show us the final product which is a fine pulver containing a mix of the mined metals. This is being exported to Chile as Bolivia does not have any final processing plants or smelters. The government thinks that mining Cerro Rico is soon completely exhausted and doesn't want to invest any money into Potosí.
Now it's time to go into one of the mines. Our tour will actually go through the mountain. – a 3km walk from one side to the other through the dark underground center.
By the entrance we come across a group of miners that are completely drunk, seems that they had a good dose of "Whisky Boliviano" already, it's only 10:30am. Our guide explains that today is the last Friday in the month, a time for miners to celebrate their monthly production.
We enter the El Rosario mine through a relatively wide and tall shaft, which was created when the colonial government ran the mining operation, so it is constructed very well versus the shafts later built in a very slipshod manner by the co-ops. We are able stand up straight as we wade through the 20 cm (8") water – thankfully our rubber boots are water-tight, so far!
The daylight disappears after a few meters into the mine and the fresh air is giving way to a stale and dusty smelling mix of stagnant and compressed air that is pushed into the mine with thick pipes that make a hissing (leaking) sound. There is no light other than the small beam of our LED headlamps (we are actually impressed that they use the more expensive LED lights).
We walk on the tracks of the mining trolleys when Efrain suddenly yells to stand aside, back to the left wall.  No engine pulling or pushing the several hundred kilos of rock, just pure muscle power.
"Careful! Ore cart coming!"
We soon hit a junction where we are told that the shaft to the left is the Candelaria mine where most of the tour agencies go...we notice that this tunnel is also relatively wide and tall; well built by the miners/slaves during colonial times.
But we are here with "The Real Deal" agency, so we turn right where much more mining activity is going on and where walkways are narrow and short. We immediately notice that there are no more lines of compressed air in the shaft, the air is very dusty and toxic in "flavor" and breathing becomes harder. The clearly visible beam of our head lights gives the final confirmation that the air is full of small dust particles.
We climb down a narrow set of steps to what Efrain calls the 3rd level (shafts are stacked in various depths under each other), the temperatures increase to about 25°C (77°F)... breathing gets even harder. The combination of dust, heat, the altitude (4,200m /13,780ft), and crawling on all fours through a dark mine is not making it easy to breathe. One girl in our group has claustrophobia – this is not the place you want to be when you are afraid of confined spaces and there were numerous warnings about this in advance.
At one point, the tunnel is so small that we literally have to squeeze through like a crouching, slinky cat. We constantly bump our helmets at the top as our beam of light is aimed at the floor of the shaft. The narrow passage gives way to a bigger space that is filled with loose rocks the size of a pineapple. This is the workplace of three miners that are just getting ready to blow up some explosives. We give them two of our dynamite sticks, some coca leaves and 2 liter bottle of Coca Cola as present. We gather around them to watch how they load the boreholes with the explosives. To be precise, they are not boreholes, but hand chiseled cavities. It takes them about 3 hours of hammering on a long chisel to get a 30cm (1 ft) deep hole. This is mining at its most primitive form, just as they did in the colonial times. We wonder why they don't use pneumatic drills, like they do in most other parts of the world. We assume it's just too expensive.
The miner that prepares the dynamite is actually wearing a decent face mask with dust filters; he is the only one we see that day that is well protected. Remember: the miners have to buy all their gear for themselves; they are working in small co-op's for themselves. There is no company that provides gear, health insurance, pensions, paid time off, etc.
They only earn money when they are working in the mine so a day off means no pay.
We spend about 20 minutes with the miners while Efrain explains about the working conditions and the mining process.
Before the dynamite is set off, we leave the site and head to a side tunnel that has