Down the mine

Montezuma continuing to exact revenge this morning, but I took some more drugs and apart from being a minor concern to start with I was actually fine in this regard.

We got picked up at the hostel at 8:45 and driven over to some depot owned by the tour company where we got dressed up in rather ridiculous looking caving/mining outfits. They then proceeded to ship us over to the miner's market in a nearby street wearing this outlandish gear. I am so glad I wasn't the only one there.

They do this thing where you are strongly encouraged to buy gifts for the miners, a soft drink and a stick of dynamite (yeah, odd combination) for 26 Bolivianos. Also coca leaves for 5 Bolivianos. I don't resent the money, but it smacks a bit nastily of charity, why they can't just stick it on the ticket price I don't know. Anyway, apart from the coca leaves, the tour guide (an ex full time and now part time miner and part time tour guide) handed most of the stuff out, which wasn't too awkward.

After a bit of background while we were there at the market (just a street with mining shops really, apparently anyone can walk in off the street and buy dynamite here, seriously), they took us over to an independent plant where the extracted ore ("complejo" in Spanish, if memory serves) is processed to extract the three metals present (zinc, lead and a tiny bit of silver), still combined together but separated from the general dross. This is then shipped abroad for processing into the actual metals.

The plant is an independent company, the mines are apparently co-operative. The miners work for themselves and set their own hours etc and sell the ore they extract to whichever processing company they like.

We were then shipped over to the mine (I should say a mine, there are about 180 apparently) and went in. Low ceilings etc but generally OK. I found it quite tiring walking, which I guess is not surprising since I had been finding it slightly so last night on the ordinary streets.

After about five or ten minutes we stopped at a sort of opening and the guide gave us a long spiel about the mine. At this point I started to briefly imagine I was freaking out, but I decided it was just because I was genuinely having difficulty getting enough air and not the other way round. They had sold us a sort of bandanna for 10 Bolivianos earlier against the dust and I took that off and found that standing still plus the improved air flow helped me feel better.

We stayed there a surprisingly long time listening to the guide, I half suspect it was to give people a chance to go crazy early on but that is complete speculation on my part. The guide said that the miners earn about 40-50 Bolivianos a day, from the sale of ore rather than as a wage, which works out about 2-2.5 times the minimum wage. Everyone in Bolivia has large families which means they need the money to support their families, and also explains why people start working in the mines at about 13 or so. (A sort of vicious circle.) Apparently most of the groups who work together consist of related people. He said there is also an element of not planning ahead and just following the traditional route, since mining runs in families.

(I might observe at this point that while it's presumably not a very pleasant life working in the mines, the guys there are at least doing it "voluntarily" in the sense that they find it the best way to get money and are working for themselves. The situation sucks - and apparently the government doesn't care much, as the mines produce relatively little of value these days, the miners mainly work because they can/have to, in 20 years the mines may exist only as a tourist attraction - but it's not quite the bonded servitude I might have imagined when someone told me there were kids working in the mines.)

We then carried on for god knows how long with a couple of briefer stops. I was finding it quite tiring (well, for all I know it was controlled panic, but I'm fairly sure it was just the exertion). It was quite exciting in a strange and slightly unpleasant way.

Some of the tunnels were extremely narrow, it was crawling on hands and knees in places and there were some fairly steep downward slopes where you sort of ended up doing a controlled slide down on your arse. I was quite chuffed with myself for not freaking out, although I sort of had to keep a deliberate check on my thought processes to stop anything getting out of control.

When we got down to the lowest level - which was only about 60m, if memory serves, but it took so much time and effort to get down - it was pretty hot. We saw some miners shoving some wooden beams up into a hole in the ceiling down there but fortunately it was too difficult for us to go through. I had deliberately avoided asking if we were nearly at the bottom, partly as I didn't want to look cowardly and partly (probably the main reason) as I thought having a vague idea but not being totally clear would make it easier to keep myself under control. ("We'll be going back soon, they said 2 hours in the mine when we booked" vs "FFS, we have another 20 minutes before we can start to go up and that's going to take an hour".)

We also passed miners with carts of other wooden props and stuff on the way and occasionally had to wait for them or they had to wait for us.

So I was basically fairly cool all the way down and to start with coming back up. Then we got to the narrow and very steep bit. The woman ahead of me seemed to be having some trouble and the guide went up to help her and I waited back before the narrow bit with the rest of the group behind me. Eventually the guide shouted (not very clearly, but there was an assistant sort of chap waiting with our group who clarified) to go ahead and I went ahead.

I distinctly remember crawling through the narrowish tunnel thinking "you know, this is actually OK". But then it opened out quite a bit but became very steep, and perhaps because I went up the wrong side (I didn't have anyone to watch in front me of) and perhaps just due to an ineptness at this kind of thing, I did a kind of spider-in-the-bath climbing and falling routine up the slope, my hands kept slipping in the mud and when I got a handhold on a rock and managed to pull myself up, I'd lose it on the next one. I think I was probably panicking at this point, although there was definitely also an element of having shot my physical effort bolt. I was wheezing like a bastard at this point and I had falled back onto the people behind me a couple of times.

What I mainly recall is the sense of being completely exhausted and it requiring a major effort just to move. I don't know how badly or if I actually panicked in the sense of flailing around or what have you.

The guide came back and first told me to climb up the right hand side and so on. I think that would have been absolutely cool if I hadn't already exhausted myself, and was perhaps a bit calmer, but it didn't help. He then literally gave me a hand up for maybe the remaining 5 or 10 metres (I have no idea), and as it was even with his help it took what felt like a superhuman effort to keep dragging myself upwards. When we got to the top of that steep bit there were a couple of miners waiting on a small wooden platform and I collapsed next to them panting. One of them asked me in Spanish if I was dying and I said yes. (Apparently the miners all speak Quecha among themselves. Our guide said that as the public schools were not good and he left school at 13 or so, his English - which he learned at night school, privately, to be a tour guide - was better than his Spanish.) The guide told me (us, some other people were coming up behind me) to move over like two metres horizontally into this other area for a rest and just doing that was yet another massive effort.

The guide talked to me a bit when we got into the rest area, probably to try to calm me down. I was so out of breath I'd almost rather not have had to reply to him. It's hard to be sure, but especially once he told me there was no more climbing I don't think I was actually disturbed any more, just immensely out of breath. I might have expected the claustrophobic "get me out of here" feelings to burst out, but they didn't, I just wanted to sit down and rest forever. (It wouldn't have done any good. To jump ahead, I still felt knackered and was wheezing terribly - and it can't be panic all that time - for the time it took to finish the tour, go back to the depot to get changed, get the bus back to the hostel and pop down the road to book in at another hostel. That must be at least half an hour and maybe an hour.)

The guide took us slightly out of the way on the way out to see Tio, the miner's god, which was some sort of effigy surrounded by empty bottles. :-) I took very few photos on the whole trip and none after the climbing-and-failing incident, I just didn't have the energy, so I didn't get a picture of this. (My hands were also absolutely filthy and I didn't want to get the camera dirty.)

We then walked out, which seemed to take forever and cover miles, but the other guys I was with kept encouraging me (perhaps a bit unnecessarily, but it's the thought that counts) and I didn't really have much choice.

I lost my bandanna when I went through the falling experience, a shame as it would have been a moderately cool souvenir but no big deal all things considered.

When we got outside I just sat there feeling like I'd swallowed about a ton of dirt and swigging intermittently at my pathetically small and dirty bottle of water, gasping away like there was no tomorrow. As I already said, this didn't wear off until much much later. I might guess half an hour or an hour. (I might compare it with the time I legged it from the underground platforms at Vauxhall up to platform 8 just in time to dive through the door of the second to last train to Kingston. I spent 10-15 minutes sat in the doorway of the carriage panting and not caring if anyone was staring, I was just so exhausted with the effort. The mine thing today was worse, but it was vaguely the same kind of fighting for breath feeling.)

I think in total we were down there for about 90 minutes or two hours. I know it was at least an hour as I took a photo when we were nearly as low as we went and compared the time stamp with the one I took outside and they were nearly an hour apart, even before we turned round.

After we got out, the tour guide blew up some dynamite we had purchased earlier as entertainment. He was clowning around with the lit fuses (they were two minute ones or something) and we all passed the bags with attached lit fuses around. I didn't get a photo taken, but the way I see it I am unlikely to forget anything that happened this morning so I really don't need them, even if they would have been cool. He then planted them somewhere on the hillside and we saw the two fairly impressive explosions. (Once again I took no photos. It took all my strength to walk over to the area where he was doing the detonation.)

I feel a bit embarrassed but on the whole I think it was actually OK. I didn't freak out at the closed spaces particularly and even after the climbing problem I think I was relatively together mentally, just not physically. Of all the problems I expected to have that problem with the climbing was not one of them.

Would I do it again? I really don't know. On the one hand I didn't freak out while things were going OK, but on the other I did feel I was having to keep myself under control, so maybe it wouldn't be OK another time. And maybe the memory of the climbing problem would give me doubts about getting out if I did a similar thing in the future. As I say, I don't know. I am not going down the mines here again, that would just be stupid. I suppose I'll have to weigh things up should I ever be presented with the opportunity to do so elsewhere.

P.S. Did I mention I just felt totally physically exhausted and every movement required a major effort? Oh yes, I did. :-)

First night and last meal in Potosi

We got here about 4pm, pretty much on time. We (I should really say they, as I was naturally sceptical and aloof) were seduced by a tout into going to a hostel different from the one the couple had already booked in. We have a sort of mini apartment with two twin rooms. There is wi-fi here but it's as slow as hell.

Once we got here I realised I had developed a minor case of the shits, to be crude and avoid difficult spelling. Took a couple of tablets and feel OK now but this is not what I need given what's going on. That shook me a bit already.

We went out for a walk round the town and then food earlier. This place is freaking me out. We walked through some market and there were various butchery kind of places. I had already seen a sort of market this morning in Uyuni with people hacking carcases up and that was fine. But this place was a step up, or down depending how you look at it. Some kind of half-dismembered animals hanging up by their windpipes (it's a mixed blessing having chefs in the party I guess), then we passed a stall which had four or five decaptitated cattle heads festering on the floor. We took photos, then were told not to, but no one actually took the cameras off us. I shall upload this delightful image, if it came out, in due course.

Just before that we all booked up for a tour of the mines tomorrow. I had vaguely planned to do this when the Welsh-Australian couple I met in San Pedro told me about it, but when we got here this afternoon Stefan showed me his Lonely Planet guidebook on the subject. Apart from the ethical issues, which quite frankly are a minor factor, the guide seemed extremely keen to hammer home the small but serious risks. This is a working mine, not some museum. As per the guide book, when we signed up they made us sign a disclaimer against injury or death, which also cheerfully pointed out that should there be a cave in we are as much at risk as the miners, and that more miners die from cave ins than any other cause. This sort of thing always reacts badly on my mental make up. The others are all so incredibly calm about it and I know the actual danger is minimal, but it was freaking me out bigtime. I feel a bit better after a pizza and a couple of beers, plus I usually tend to get my worrying out of the way in advance and then feel OKish when push comes to shove. Nonetheless I spent most of the night marvelling that the other three guys apparently find nothing remotely strange about signing disclaimers like that and what have you.

It is a slight comfort to observe that I now have firsthand experience that guide books exaggerate. My "South America on a shoestring" guide claims that the trip from San Pedro to Uyuni via the salt flats requires "a plucky, positive attitude". I would not consider myself abundant in this quality and yet I didn't feel compelled to dig deep inside myself for resources during the trip. Sitting in the back of a car with minimal leg room for 8 hours with intermittent short breaks isn't pleasant, but I don't think it requires much pluck. It also says you shouldn't stay in a salt hotel as they are environmentally unsound (boohoo) and that you should bring "something for the thumping headaches". I didn't even want to take an aspirin or anything. It was like a mild hangover at worst.

And yet if I had read that in the guide before I booked the trip I would have been put off completely. Fingers crossed it's the same with the mine trip.

We had to leg it back to the hostel after the pizza as it turns out it shuts at 11pm. (I was completely unaware of this, as was Stefan, but the other two had seen the sign. They didn't exactly hammer the fact in when we booked the room.) This is absolutely rank. I was planning on moving to a single room here tomorrow but as it is I think I will see if I can find somewhere nearby which doesn't impose these prison-like rules. We got back at 11:05pm or thereabouts and had to bang on the door a bit to get in. I may exaggerate slightly but Susie, who shows no qualms about going down some fucking mine tomorrow, was rather worried about us getting in. I didn't give a toss, I knew someone would turn up for us ten minutes late and push comes to shove we just go somewhere else. Different strokes and all that.

Apart from the general "oh my fucking god"-ness of it, the mine tour means we have to be picked up at the hostel at 8:45am tomorrow morning. Yet another day with an early start. All the more reason to get a single room in a decent hostel for tomorrow night, celebrate still being alive (if I am ;-) ) with a Saturday night quite frankly on the lash and sleep late on Sunday.

Maybe it was nerves but I felt a bit short of breath while we were walking around the town earlier. I think it's altitude mainly and the others report vaguely similar symptoms (although the precise manifestations appear very personal). This is apparently the highest city in the world at (by guide book, not GPS) 4060m.

I really hope Montezuma's revenge is under control as I am likely to shit myself tomorrow anyway without any extra help. I had some medicine already but I popped into a pharmacy to buy some more while we were walking round the town tonight. They sold me some "carbon", but I checked with them it has drugs in and it has some chemical-ly looking name on the packet so I assume it is not just some crappy folk remedy. The other guys bought some stuff too (for different complaints), I gather it is true that you can get just about anything without a prescription here. It occurred to me later on I should maybe have bought myself some kind of tranquiliser for tomorrow, but I figure it's probably best for my self respect to do it unaided, and also it's hardly the situation to start experimenting with random drugs.

Oh, I just checked my shoestring guide re the mine tour. It's not surprising given it's a Lonely Planet guide but it says basically the same as Stefan's guide. Vaguely heartening to note the tour company we are going with comes highly recommended for their professional practices. I have to quote, in the hope that I can at least slightly dispute the claims later, the guide book as saying that the mines are "fairly nightmarish places" and that a visit is "demanding, shocking and memorable". I can handle shocking and memorable but demanding makes me question myself. Anyway, I will do it as a homage to Orwell. :-) Besides, this may be one of those rare situations where being a shortarse has serious benefits. :-)