Greetings, dear readers. I have started a pattern that I do not expect to break anytime soon, and that is to compose my updates solely from cities with fun-to-pronouce names. In this case, that means that Señor Neubz and I are tucked away in the hopping hamlet of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Its people, like my friend Brad Huebner, have a deep appreciation for whitewashed jeans, and they, too, send their regards.
I am going to make it known in advance that this E-mail will be peppered with superlatives. Understand that this is simply because this past week has been one of those rarest of runs that reeks of rich experiences laid back to back to back.
Bolivia has surpassed my lofty expectations and has earned its place as my favorite country of the trip. This was not difficult. I knew before I crossed the border that the new Bolivian President, Evo Morales, wears a sash whenever he is in public (and most likely while he sleeps). I love civil pageantry, so admittedly Bolivia had a leg up. I also appreciate a politician with a good sense of humor. On a recent trip a month or so ago, our esteemed Secretary of State Doctor Condeleeza Rice paid a visit to President Morales in an effort to get him to limit his country´s production of coca leaves - the base element in cocaine. Bolivia is one of the world´s leading producers of coca, as it has been used in its benign natural form by the indigenous people in this area for over a thousand years for its myriad benefits in both tea and in herbal medicine. As Morales was previously a coca farmer, he probably had little intention of doing anything at all to curb the growing of coca. At the end of the meeting, he presented Rice with a guitar decorated with a coca leaf inlay. Rice, not knowing what coca leaves actually looked like, accepted the guitar and smiled for pictures with Morales amidst laughter by the Bolivians in attendance. Only back in the US did she realize that it was a shenanigan. I can´t say that I agree with his choice of enemies, but that´s pretty funny.
When Neubz last wrote, we had just left a prison in La Paz. What he failed to report in his E-mail is that he accidentally left our pass from the Director of Prisons in an inmate´s cell, so we were temporarily trapped between the prisoners (and their cosmopolitan suggestions as to what we should do with ourselves) and the iron faced guards, who would not let us leave without it. Thankfully our prisoner/guide retrieved it and we were on our way.
Since Neubz´s time is limited, we are striving to hit as much as is humanly possible before he heads home to begin his life behind a desk. One item on our collective wishlist was to dip into the Amazonian rainforest, and that is what we originally set off from La Paz to accomplish. About four hours from La Paz, it became clear that this was not going to happen. We´ve been fairly lucky with the quality of roads we´ve traversed on the whole on this trip, but here that luck collapsed.
The road that exits the Bolivian capital to the northeast is regarded as ¨The World´s Most Dangerous Road¨, and thus is concurrently touted as a tourist attraction. If one is so inclined, a mountain bike can be rented in La Paz on the cheap and you can join a guided group in riding the 25 or so miles down one of the steepest roads in the world, praying all the while that your brakes hold out as you zip through the fog around sharp switchbacks. While this was not our reason for being there, we had no choice but to take that road, and in doing so simply cut our engines and coasted at around 55mph past herds of petrified bikers who probably did not appreciate Neubz and I honking our $3 bicycle horns and hooting at them.
It didn´t take a seasoned environmentalist to realize that we had arrived in the rainforest about 20 miles later. Here the asphalt and the two-lane system both stopped, and the mud and the spirited driving began. I use the term ¨spirited driving¨ not to describe our speed. That hovered at around 20mph. Rather, I refer to the conduct of the other savvy personnel on the roadway. Typical passenger traffic was, for the most part, no longer part of the game. All that remained were buses, dump trucks, and cargo vehicles. All three varieties had little interest in our presence, and treated our meager attempts at advancement with disdain.
To augment their glaring absence of a second lane, the Bolivians had strategically positioned a series of top-notch state employees (mostly children) at various curves along the road, each armed with what appeared to be a snowshoe covered with red fabric on one side and green on the other. From their omniscient posts, they employed the mock snowshoe (usually by waving it wildly) to signal approaching traffic whether or not there was a large diesel delivery truck making haste towards the curve in the opposite direction. If that was the case, the truck ordained by the child to lay in wait would seek refuge on one of the few legitimate pull-offs to await his turn to proceed. Even these legitimate pull-offs lacked a railing, and moreover, were perched precipitously above a significant fall into the land of bad dreams.
This would have been difficult enough had the roads been in good stead, but they most certainly were not. A persistent drizzle (perhaps a factor in the rainforest gaining its namesake?) and then downpour littered the dirt road with puddles - some deep, some not - and woe to he that attempted to pilot his two-wheeled gadget along their crests, for unto him was delivered a warranted descent into chaos. More than once did Neubz and I nearly brakedance over the edge in our efforts to correct and then overcorrect our mistakes. Between the slippery tracks and the merciless advance of the cargo trucks that did not wait for us to find the shoulder, our morale was shaken. And when we realized that the distance of the round trip was more significant than the map indicated on account of the many curves (a lip smacking total of approximately 600 miles, the equivalent of driving through a jungle from Milwaukee to Nashville, Tennessee...or for the Coasties, from New York City to Winston-Salem, North Carolina...and, again, at an average of 20mph), we wisely counted our blessings and headed back to La Paz.
In lieu of our rainforest adventure, we set our course south by southeast for Salaar de Uyuni, the largest salt lake in the world. We did not know what to expect, but had read and heard good things, so we thought that it would make a fine second fiddle. The road there was uneventful for the first half of the trip, save for a small discovery. As it so happens, amongst the many coups that have shaken this country over the last half-century, Bolivia was apparently ruled for a very brief period by a group of kindergarten students from rural Iowa in the early ´60s. The youngsters accomplished little before they were ousted, but their achievements last to this day. Their sole goal was giggles and snickering. Their major work, obviously, was the renaming of the world´s largest mountain lake to Lake Titticacca. But they didn´t stop there. The second largest lake in the country they named Lake Poopo (look it up). On its eastern shores you will find the town of Poopo, and southwest you will find - perhaps in anticipation of Neubz´s rank feet - the small town of Aroma.
It was not far past Poopo that we holed up for the night in a little nugget called Challapata. In keeping with tradition, we chose another town that lacked that was wanting for electricity. After wandering around the town´s unpaved streets in search of a restaurant, we came upon a tired structure and ordered by lamplight. Under normal circumstances, the arrival of two tourists would have been the most exciting event in the past 30 years, but when there was no electricity, it was colossal. Neubz admirably went outside to play circus performer to the fifteen or so children that had gathered around the bikes. I sat inside and sipped my tasteless broth. But within a half hour the children turned ugly and started to ask for money. They didn´t know the English word for ¨money¨, so I told them that it was ¨scratch¨ and that Neubz was Señor Rico. As I drove away, Neubz was encircled by a phalanx of youngsters calling out for ¨Scratch! Scratch! Scratch!¨ And so continued yet another underlying tradition of the trip: throwing the other guy under the bus whenever possible.
For the latter half of the journey south, we passed through a desert terrain dotted with wild bushes that resembled the hair on those Troll pen-toppers from days of yore. It was a Martian landscape accented with interleaving bodies of swirling red and yellow dust, and it was in this kaleidoscope of color that we began to wage war with the Kryptonite of motorcycles everywhere.
Under no other circumstances does the exclamation of the word ¨Sand!!!¨ elicit such terror in the heart of man, much as the bellowing of ¨Berg!¨ did from the crow´s nest of the Titanic did a century ago. Or to put it in more modern and tangible terms for you, the aristocratic reader, it is similar to the alarm experienced when you look down and shout ¨Fire!¨ upon seeing that the sleeve of your chartreuse smoking jacket has caught alight, and you curse yourself for splurging on that giant pewter candleabra at Liberace´s estate sale...and even more so for placing it so perilously close to your favorite reading chair.
As you sight the sand, there is little you can do but to cut the throttle, hold the clutch, batten down the hatches, and ride out the storm. There were times when we would be cruising at fifty, crest a hill, and spot thick sand lining the descent. These were times when verbal reactions ranged from the profane (¨#%!!&¬¬$¨) to the obscure (¨Polynesian Appetite!¨), but always resulted in miraculous recoveries. Whatever of our nine lives remained from the jungle, we expended in the sand.
The other hallmark of the road south was wildlife. If my mom and I have one thing in common, it is that we find llamas to be the funniest animals on Earth. From there we start to diverge; she, for example, likes to eat chalk. For those of you that disagree with my claim, I challenge you to hold your composure for 20 seconds under the weight of a llama´s sly smile. Whatever your stance, this was Llama Row. I have never in my life felt more like I was absolutely in the middle of nowhere as I did upon that sandy road, but if we did perchance feast our eyes upon the countenance of the living, it was usually the craned neck of the llama.
From what I can gather, llamas engage in but four activities: nibbling, taking tasty sips, keeping it real, and scheming, though the last activity is seldom undertaken except under the guise of one of the other three. The llama herders down here are typically old indigenous women. They realized - and quite correctly, I might add - that it would be a tall order to brand a llama, so they have taken to marking llamas in their herds by tying foofy pink pieces of yarn in distinct patterns around each llama´s ear. I am sure that the male llamas are by now aware of this unjust mockery. Once they have adequately schemed, I foresee a comeuppance for many an old woman when these goofy creatures come together in an ¨Animal Farm¨-style mutiny.
At last we arrived at the salt lake at Salaar de Uyuni, and I can say without reservation (again the superlatives) that it was the most bizarre place that I have ever been in my life. It defies a worthy explanation, though I will attempt to post some pics. It differed chiefly from all other lakes that I have visited in one way: you could drive on it. I´m no limnologist, but I do not understand how so much salt could form on the surface of a lake. Alas, I forgot to pack my auger for this trip, but I would estimate that the salt was anywhere from one to three feet thick at any given point, based upon the disconcerting holes that I saw periodically as we raced across it. How strong is salt? Well, I saw a coach bus drive on the lake at one point, so I´m guessing that it´s pretty serious. It was truly surreal. We drove about fifty miles in, and I was thankful for my sunglasses. The salt was as blindingly white as my upper thigh, and it flowed out identically in all directions for what seemed like forever.
Again, I don´t understand how so much salt crystallized, but in doing so it developed a set of geometrical lattices across the sheer white surface of the lake similar to what you could look down and see in the pattern on the surface of your skin. In this way, I felt like I was speeding across the chest of a giant Albino. Now, when you´re driving across a giant Albino´s chest you need proper musical accompaniment. Those of you familiar with the voluminous works of the late Ray Charles probably know ¨One Mint Julep¨. If you don´t, I suggest that you go to pandora.com and look it up, as this is salt lake racing music.
I am going to make it known in advance that this E-mail will be peppered with superlatives. Understand that this is simply because this past week has been one of those rarest of runs that reeks of rich experiences laid back to back to back.
Bolivia has surpassed my lofty expectations and has earned its place as my favorite country of the trip. This was not difficult. I knew before I crossed the border that the new Bolivian President, Evo Morales, wears a sash whenever he is in public (and most likely while he sleeps). I love civil pageantry, so admittedly Bolivia had a leg up. I also appreciate a politician with a good sense of humor. On a recent trip a month or so ago, our esteemed Secretary of State Doctor Condeleeza Rice paid a visit to President Morales in an effort to get him to limit his country´s production of coca leaves - the base element in cocaine. Bolivia is one of the world´s leading producers of coca, as it has been used in its benign natural form by the indigenous people in this area for over a thousand years for its myriad benefits in both tea and in herbal medicine. As Morales was previously a coca farmer, he probably had little intention of doing anything at all to curb the growing of coca. At the end of the meeting, he presented Rice with a guitar decorated with a coca leaf inlay. Rice, not knowing what coca leaves actually looked like, accepted the guitar and smiled for pictures with Morales amidst laughter by the Bolivians in attendance. Only back in the US did she realize that it was a shenanigan. I can´t say that I agree with his choice of enemies, but that´s pretty funny.
When Neubz last wrote, we had just left a prison in La Paz. What he failed to report in his E-mail is that he accidentally left our pass from the Director of Prisons in an inmate´s cell, so we were temporarily trapped between the prisoners (and their cosmopolitan suggestions as to what we should do with ourselves) and the iron faced guards, who would not let us leave without it. Thankfully our prisoner/guide retrieved it and we were on our way.
Since Neubz´s time is limited, we are striving to hit as much as is humanly possible before he heads home to begin his life behind a desk. One item on our collective wishlist was to dip into the Amazonian rainforest, and that is what we originally set off from La Paz to accomplish. About four hours from La Paz, it became clear that this was not going to happen. We´ve been fairly lucky with the quality of roads we´ve traversed on the whole on this trip, but here that luck collapsed.
The road that exits the Bolivian capital to the northeast is regarded as ¨The World´s Most Dangerous Road¨, and thus is concurrently touted as a tourist attraction. If one is so inclined, a mountain bike can be rented in La Paz on the cheap and you can join a guided group in riding the 25 or so miles down one of the steepest roads in the world, praying all the while that your brakes hold out as you zip through the fog around sharp switchbacks. While this was not our reason for being there, we had no choice but to take that road, and in doing so simply cut our engines and coasted at around 55mph past herds of petrified bikers who probably did not appreciate Neubz and I honking our $3 bicycle horns and hooting at them.
It didn´t take a seasoned environmentalist to realize that we had arrived in the rainforest about 20 miles later. Here the asphalt and the two-lane system both stopped, and the mud and the spirited driving began. I use the term ¨spirited driving¨ not to describe our speed. That hovered at around 20mph. Rather, I refer to the conduct of the other savvy personnel on the roadway. Typical passenger traffic was, for the most part, no longer part of the game. All that remained were buses, dump trucks, and cargo vehicles. All three varieties had little interest in our presence, and treated our meager attempts at advancement with disdain.
To augment their glaring absence of a second lane, the Bolivians had strategically positioned a series of top-notch state employees (mostly children) at various curves along the road, each armed with what appeared to be a snowshoe covered with red fabric on one side and green on the other. From their omniscient posts, they employed the mock snowshoe (usually by waving it wildly) to signal approaching traffic whether or not there was a large diesel delivery truck making haste towards the curve in the opposite direction. If that was the case, the truck ordained by the child to lay in wait would seek refuge on one of the few legitimate pull-offs to await his turn to proceed. Even these legitimate pull-offs lacked a railing, and moreover, were perched precipitously above a significant fall into the land of bad dreams.
This would have been difficult enough had the roads been in good stead, but they most certainly were not. A persistent drizzle (perhaps a factor in the rainforest gaining its namesake?) and then downpour littered the dirt road with puddles - some deep, some not - and woe to he that attempted to pilot his two-wheeled gadget along their crests, for unto him was delivered a warranted descent into chaos. More than once did Neubz and I nearly brakedance over the edge in our efforts to correct and then overcorrect our mistakes. Between the slippery tracks and the merciless advance of the cargo trucks that did not wait for us to find the shoulder, our morale was shaken. And when we realized that the distance of the round trip was more significant than the map indicated on account of the many curves (a lip smacking total of approximately 600 miles, the equivalent of driving through a jungle from Milwaukee to Nashville, Tennessee...or for the Coasties, from New York City to Winston-Salem, North Carolina...and, again, at an average of 20mph), we wisely counted our blessings and headed back to La Paz.
In lieu of our rainforest adventure, we set our course south by southeast for Salaar de Uyuni, the largest salt lake in the world. We did not know what to expect, but had read and heard good things, so we thought that it would make a fine second fiddle. The road there was uneventful for the first half of the trip, save for a small discovery. As it so happens, amongst the many coups that have shaken this country over the last half-century, Bolivia was apparently ruled for a very brief period by a group of kindergarten students from rural Iowa in the early ´60s. The youngsters accomplished little before they were ousted, but their achievements last to this day. Their sole goal was giggles and snickering. Their major work, obviously, was the renaming of the world´s largest mountain lake to Lake Titticacca. But they didn´t stop there. The second largest lake in the country they named Lake Poopo (look it up). On its eastern shores you will find the town of Poopo, and southwest you will find - perhaps in anticipation of Neubz´s rank feet - the small town of Aroma.
It was not far past Poopo that we holed up for the night in a little nugget called Challapata. In keeping with tradition, we chose another town that lacked that was wanting for electricity. After wandering around the town´s unpaved streets in search of a restaurant, we came upon a tired structure and ordered by lamplight. Under normal circumstances, the arrival of two tourists would have been the most exciting event in the past 30 years, but when there was no electricity, it was colossal. Neubz admirably went outside to play circus performer to the fifteen or so children that had gathered around the bikes. I sat inside and sipped my tasteless broth. But within a half hour the children turned ugly and started to ask for money. They didn´t know the English word for ¨money¨, so I told them that it was ¨scratch¨ and that Neubz was Señor Rico. As I drove away, Neubz was encircled by a phalanx of youngsters calling out for ¨Scratch! Scratch! Scratch!¨ And so continued yet another underlying tradition of the trip: throwing the other guy under the bus whenever possible.
For the latter half of the journey south, we passed through a desert terrain dotted with wild bushes that resembled the hair on those Troll pen-toppers from days of yore. It was a Martian landscape accented with interleaving bodies of swirling red and yellow dust, and it was in this kaleidoscope of color that we began to wage war with the Kryptonite of motorcycles everywhere.
Under no other circumstances does the exclamation of the word ¨Sand!!!¨ elicit such terror in the heart of man, much as the bellowing of ¨Berg!¨ did from the crow´s nest of the Titanic did a century ago. Or to put it in more modern and tangible terms for you, the aristocratic reader, it is similar to the alarm experienced when you look down and shout ¨Fire!¨ upon seeing that the sleeve of your chartreuse smoking jacket has caught alight, and you curse yourself for splurging on that giant pewter candleabra at Liberace´s estate sale...and even more so for placing it so perilously close to your favorite reading chair.
As you sight the sand, there is little you can do but to cut the throttle, hold the clutch, batten down the hatches, and ride out the storm. There were times when we would be cruising at fifty, crest a hill, and spot thick sand lining the descent. These were times when verbal reactions ranged from the profane (¨#%!!&¬¬$¨) to the obscure (¨Polynesian Appetite!¨), but always resulted in miraculous recoveries. Whatever of our nine lives remained from the jungle, we expended in the sand.
The other hallmark of the road south was wildlife. If my mom and I have one thing in common, it is that we find llamas to be the funniest animals on Earth. From there we start to diverge; she, for example, likes to eat chalk. For those of you that disagree with my claim, I challenge you to hold your composure for 20 seconds under the weight of a llama´s sly smile. Whatever your stance, this was Llama Row. I have never in my life felt more like I was absolutely in the middle of nowhere as I did upon that sandy road, but if we did perchance feast our eyes upon the countenance of the living, it was usually the craned neck of the llama.
From what I can gather, llamas engage in but four activities: nibbling, taking tasty sips, keeping it real, and scheming, though the last activity is seldom undertaken except under the guise of one of the other three. The llama herders down here are typically old indigenous women. They realized - and quite correctly, I might add - that it would be a tall order to brand a llama, so they have taken to marking llamas in their herds by tying foofy pink pieces of yarn in distinct patterns around each llama´s ear. I am sure that the male llamas are by now aware of this unjust mockery. Once they have adequately schemed, I foresee a comeuppance for many an old woman when these goofy creatures come together in an ¨Animal Farm¨-style mutiny.
At last we arrived at the salt lake at Salaar de Uyuni, and I can say without reservation (again the superlatives) that it was the most bizarre place that I have ever been in my life. It defies a worthy explanation, though I will attempt to post some pics. It differed chiefly from all other lakes that I have visited in one way: you could drive on it. I´m no limnologist, but I do not understand how so much salt could form on the surface of a lake. Alas, I forgot to pack my auger for this trip, but I would estimate that the salt was anywhere from one to three feet thick at any given point, based upon the disconcerting holes that I saw periodically as we raced across it. How strong is salt? Well, I saw a coach bus drive on the lake at one point, so I´m guessing that it´s pretty serious. It was truly surreal. We drove about fifty miles in, and I was thankful for my sunglasses. The salt was as blindingly white as my upper thigh, and it flowed out identically in all directions for what seemed like forever.
Again, I don´t understand how so much salt crystallized, but in doing so it developed a set of geometrical lattices across the sheer white surface of the lake similar to what you could look down and see in the pattern on the surface of your skin. In this way, I felt like I was speeding across the chest of a giant Albino. Now, when you´re driving across a giant Albino´s chest you need proper musical accompaniment. Those of you familiar with the voluminous works of the late Ray Charles probably know ¨One Mint Julep¨. If you don´t, I suggest that you go to pandora.com and look it up, as this is salt lake racing music.
Making the whole experience even more outlandish, we stopped at two increasingly peculiar places on the lake. As with everything in life, there is always one overly passionate person that is not content with merely appreciating something that they enjoy in life, and this is the person that decides to take it to the next level. Anyone who has ever been to the Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, knows what I´m talking about. In this case, someone decided to build an entire hotel out of salt. By cutting segments out of the lake, he or she built quite a grandiose structure, complete with salt tables, salt chairs, and assuredly plush salt mattresses for the beds.
The second place was the Isle of Incahuani. The island was relatively small - perhaps 1/2 mile by 1 mile and rising about 200 feet out of the lake. But it supported life, and a slew of cacti as tall as 35 feet slithered up out of its soil. According to a Bolivian tour guide that I met on the lake (and who secretly shared his llama meat with us meant for his Israeli clients), the story goes a little something like this: In the 1500´s, silver was discovered a few hours away in Potosí. Not wanting to be forced by the Spaniards into working the mines, a few of the Incas around the area banded together, rounded up some food and some cactus seeds, and fled to the island, where they lived off of the water from the cacti and ate the cactus ¨meat¨.
Potosí was in fact our next destination. Perched amongst the mountains at over 4100 meters above sea level, Potosí is the highest city in the world, with a history that ranks among the world´s most tragic. The only reason that a city this high was founded in the first place was that in 1545 rumors of a silver deposit were swirling around the area - rumors that proved true. And so began the mining of the richest source of silver that the world had ever seen.
The Spaniards couldn´t be troubled with working the mines themselves, so naturally they turned to the indigenous tribes around the area. When they started dying in waves during forced 48 hours shifts in horrible conditions under which - among many others - the workers had to sleep underground between shifts, were fed minimally if at all, and if brought to the surface had their eyes bandaged since they couldn´t tolerate the light. When the indigenous fodder started to wear thin (¨What´s that? You accept Jesus Christ as your Personal Savior and renounce your pagan gods? Well, get back in that mine anyway!¨), the benevolent Spaniards brought in African slaves by the boat load. Within a hundred years, Potosí´s population had mushroomed to over 160,000, making it more populous than even contemporary Madrid. Conservative estimates put the number of slaves that died working the mines somewhere in the vicinity of nine million. Adjusted for population inflation, that would put any of the colonial Spaniards in the running against Uncle Joe Stalin for the title of ¨Most Murderous Rat Bastard In the History of the World¨. I can´t help but hope that they´re all burning in hell as I write this. How much silver did they pull out of Cerro Rico in Potosí? The common Spanish boast at the time was ¨enough to build a silver bridge from Potosí to Spain and still have silver to carry across it¨. The mineral wealth from Bolivia floated the Spanish Empire for more than two centuries.
When we rolled into Potosí our main goal was to somehow take a tour of the mines. Even now, almost five centuries later, the people of Potosí are still working the mines (and they still only last an average of 15-20 years in there before they succumb to silicosis), though its stocks are understandably now wearing about as thin as Neubz´s mustache. We found a guide in a 30 year-old named Willy, who had himself actually worked in the mines for seven years (from the ripe age of 12 to 19). I won´t get into the details of how we found him, but suffice it to say that it was an accident resulting from the fact that we are idiots who either consistently receive faulty advice or simply fail to understand it correctly.
The second place was the Isle of Incahuani. The island was relatively small - perhaps 1/2 mile by 1 mile and rising about 200 feet out of the lake. But it supported life, and a slew of cacti as tall as 35 feet slithered up out of its soil. According to a Bolivian tour guide that I met on the lake (and who secretly shared his llama meat with us meant for his Israeli clients), the story goes a little something like this: In the 1500´s, silver was discovered a few hours away in Potosí. Not wanting to be forced by the Spaniards into working the mines, a few of the Incas around the area banded together, rounded up some food and some cactus seeds, and fled to the island, where they lived off of the water from the cacti and ate the cactus ¨meat¨.
Potosí was in fact our next destination. Perched amongst the mountains at over 4100 meters above sea level, Potosí is the highest city in the world, with a history that ranks among the world´s most tragic. The only reason that a city this high was founded in the first place was that in 1545 rumors of a silver deposit were swirling around the area - rumors that proved true. And so began the mining of the richest source of silver that the world had ever seen.
The Spaniards couldn´t be troubled with working the mines themselves, so naturally they turned to the indigenous tribes around the area. When they started dying in waves during forced 48 hours shifts in horrible conditions under which - among many others - the workers had to sleep underground between shifts, were fed minimally if at all, and if brought to the surface had their eyes bandaged since they couldn´t tolerate the light. When the indigenous fodder started to wear thin (¨What´s that? You accept Jesus Christ as your Personal Savior and renounce your pagan gods? Well, get back in that mine anyway!¨), the benevolent Spaniards brought in African slaves by the boat load. Within a hundred years, Potosí´s population had mushroomed to over 160,000, making it more populous than even contemporary Madrid. Conservative estimates put the number of slaves that died working the mines somewhere in the vicinity of nine million. Adjusted for population inflation, that would put any of the colonial Spaniards in the running against Uncle Joe Stalin for the title of ¨Most Murderous Rat Bastard In the History of the World¨. I can´t help but hope that they´re all burning in hell as I write this. How much silver did they pull out of Cerro Rico in Potosí? The common Spanish boast at the time was ¨enough to build a silver bridge from Potosí to Spain and still have silver to carry across it¨. The mineral wealth from Bolivia floated the Spanish Empire for more than two centuries.
When we rolled into Potosí our main goal was to somehow take a tour of the mines. Even now, almost five centuries later, the people of Potosí are still working the mines (and they still only last an average of 15-20 years in there before they succumb to silicosis), though its stocks are understandably now wearing about as thin as Neubz´s mustache. We found a guide in a 30 year-old named Willy, who had himself actually worked in the mines for seven years (from the ripe age of 12 to 19). I won´t get into the details of how we found him, but suffice it to say that it was an accident resulting from the fact that we are idiots who either consistently receive faulty advice or simply fail to understand it correctly.
In any case, it was a stroke of luck, as Willy was one of only seven guides in the town who had previously worked in the mountain - and he spoke great English on top of it. We set out in the morning for the mines, donned our ill-fitting mining gear, and stopped by the miner´s market for some gifts for the poor saps working underground whose work we would be interrupting by traipsing around in there. We spent all of about $2.50 on a large sack full of goodies (a massive amount of coca leaves, small bottles of 98% alcohol, unfiltered cigarettes, soft drinks). We were about to get back in the cab when Willy stopped me and pointed to a lady with a makeshift booth about ten feet away (right next to the guy selling alligator heads).
Willy: (in English) ¨One more thing¨.
Me: ¨What?¨
Willy: ¨Dinimita.¨
Me: ¨What?¨
Willy: ¨Dinimita.¨
Me: ¨Dynamite!?¨
Willy: ¨Yes. Do you want some?¨
Me: ¨How much is it?¨
Willy: ¨10 Bolivianos ($1.25). We can make it blow.¨
Dynamite in hand, we made our way to the entrance to the mine. I´d say the average Bolivian male is around 5´6¨, the average Bolivian miner shorter still. When they carved out the narrow passageways through the dark, their primary concern was not the ease with which foreign visitors could stroll the corridors, so Neubz and I were forced to saunter through like a couple of Quasimotos. It became immediately obvious that this tour would not fly in the US. We had signed no waivers, yet we started to descend and ascend rickety homemade ladders that lacked both rungs and sufficient nails (and in one case, half a supporting leg) as we made our way deeper and deeper into the mines, stopping only to pin ourselves against the walls as a couple of boys in their early teens bound for daylight would roll by pushing a mine car loaded down with 2000 pounds of raw minerals. From time to time we would come upon miners working in the darkness at the end of a hall by the dim light of their headlamps. We shared some of our coca and alcohol with them, got to hear what they thought of the mines, and watched them work with tools more primitive than hammers (one older guy was tapping away with a metal tent stake). It was absolutely fascinating. I could write more about the statue of the Devil that they built and offered gifts to every time they entered the mine to guarantee their safety (they called him ¨Tío, a mixture of Spanish for ¨uncle¨ and Quechua for ¨my good friend¨) while they were in his territory underground taking his minerals, but this E-mail is getting long and I have to run. But, yes, we set off the dynamite. And, yes, it was loud.
Willy: (in English) ¨One more thing¨.
Me: ¨What?¨
Willy: ¨Dinimita.¨
Me: ¨What?¨
Willy: ¨Dinimita.¨
Me: ¨Dynamite!?¨
Willy: ¨Yes. Do you want some?¨
Me: ¨How much is it?¨
Willy: ¨10 Bolivianos ($1.25). We can make it blow.¨
Dynamite in hand, we made our way to the entrance to the mine. I´d say the average Bolivian male is around 5´6¨, the average Bolivian miner shorter still. When they carved out the narrow passageways through the dark, their primary concern was not the ease with which foreign visitors could stroll the corridors, so Neubz and I were forced to saunter through like a couple of Quasimotos. It became immediately obvious that this tour would not fly in the US. We had signed no waivers, yet we started to descend and ascend rickety homemade ladders that lacked both rungs and sufficient nails (and in one case, half a supporting leg) as we made our way deeper and deeper into the mines, stopping only to pin ourselves against the walls as a couple of boys in their early teens bound for daylight would roll by pushing a mine car loaded down with 2000 pounds of raw minerals. From time to time we would come upon miners working in the darkness at the end of a hall by the dim light of their headlamps. We shared some of our coca and alcohol with them, got to hear what they thought of the mines, and watched them work with tools more primitive than hammers (one older guy was tapping away with a metal tent stake). It was absolutely fascinating. I could write more about the statue of the Devil that they built and offered gifts to every time they entered the mine to guarantee their safety (they called him ¨Tío, a mixture of Spanish for ¨uncle¨ and Quechua for ¨my good friend¨) while they were in his territory underground taking his minerals, but this E-mail is getting long and I have to run. But, yes, we set off the dynamite. And, yes, it was loud.
So now we are in Cochabamba, set in the heart of Bolivia´s agricultural region. We made our way here yesterday while weaving through a couple of miles worth of backed-up semis whose progress was impeded by a oil tanker train car that had been wheeled across the road and adorned with a giant Bolivian flag. Apparently some of the other political parties are not a fan of the new Constitution that Morales and his circle are penning. But we squeaked through, and now will head east to Brazil.
- Tom
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| Manifest - 9/22/06 |
