The last few days have been amazing. To properly describe the events, some vulgar language will be required. First I want to recap the events since Friday. I take a flight to Salta, meet two friends who came via 22 hour bus from Bs As, depart Salta midnight on Sunday, arrive Villazon Bolivia 7am, depart Villazon 3:30 via train, arrive Uyuni 1:00 am, 9am, awake in Uyuni, arrange Salt Flat tour leaving at noon, return from salt flats at 8pm, 10am Wednesday, depart UYuni arrive in Potosi 3:00pm, arrange mine tour, complete mine tour at 7:30 PM, depart Potosi for Sucre, arrive 10:45 PM, the basic point I am trying to get across is that we have used every minute of every day and even though we ran ourselves ragged and stomped on our cardiovascular system, we saw a lot and had a great time…all of which I will get into below.
I left off the last post with the promise of a recap of the salt flats trip. We were a little late to the game to pick up one of the more common multi day trips into the flats so we were scrambling to find a single day trip. Luckily we found a company that put together a custom tour for us. We and one new travel companion hopped into their vintage 80’s Land Cruiser and headed towards the flats. I also want to mention that it was amazing how many land cruisers were in this town. In fact, every tour vehicle was a land cruiser..probably for their high capacity seating and durability…these things take amazing abuse. I could spend hours talking about these salt flats so I’ll try to keep this to a minimum. Basically, the salt flats in Uyuni are the largest in the world. It is an ancient dried up lake bed and it is as flat as can be. The surface is really salt….I tried it…yup, salty. It is amazing to be in the middle of the flats with white all the way to the horizon then blue sky. It felt like one of the most solitary places in the world. We spent several hours driving around the flats, saw their national park on an island in the flat that was full of huge cacti, drove by an old volcano and finished off the day watching the sun set..it was truly spectacular. One fun thing to do on the flats is take funny pics because the backdrop is nothing but horizon. We took lots of these, jumping, posing etc that you can check out on my picassa site. Now, I should mention that the salt flats were located at about 13,500’ above sea level. I had just acclimated to this acclimated to this altitude.
Next stop was Potosi, the highest fucking city in the world. The bus ride was fucking horrendous. None of the roads were fucking paved. Opening the windows was tough because of the fucking dust. The ride was so fucking rough, it felt like we were in a fucking blender for 6 hours. However, we departed in reasonable spirits and got to see some great scenery. Our main goal here was to get a real deal legit tour of their giant mine. The mine supports the entire town of about 300K. We arrived pretty late so we had to arrange a custom tour with a private tour guide. The tour provided scrub clothes, mining lights and a guide. It was hot in the mine so we also took some water. We first visited the processing plant where workers still work with toxic chemicals like cyanide and wear almost no protections. These are actually the easy jobs though. Our next stop was the actual mine located at just a little over 15K feet above sea level. This is higher than any mountain in the lower 48 states. I was acclimating to the altitude all over again. During the tour we had to crawl, slide, climb and walk for about 3 kilometers. The working conditions were horrendous. They were still working as if it were colonial times…with hammer and chisels. They got their first electric winch last year. The air is thick with metal and rock dust. The life expectancy of a driller in the mine is about 10-15 years after he begins. The longest a mine employee can expect to live is to 50-55 yrs before their lungs crap out. Most start working in the mine when they are 13-14 years old and work for about $8 a day. I have a video posted below. Just so that you get a clearer picture of this proposition I need to list a few details. This wasn’t Disney land folks and this mine was not set up for tours…it was fucking legit. There were many Big Fucking Holes where we could easily slip to our death. The air is already super thin at 15,000 feet and we actually went into a mine where half of the available air is laden with rock, asbestos and metal dust. Our throats felt metallic the entire time and I was definitely light headed. We had to climb down a ladder where the rungs were only secured by single extremely bent nails…the rungs rotated on a pivot if you were not carefully balanced. At one point there was a derailed mine cart and I got to help lift it back onto the tracks.
Anyway, this post is getting way too long. Long story short, that week of travel was like being in a twilight zone. Not only because the thin air made us light headed but because it was really like a foreign world. No heat, dirt roads, people living in shanties, fear of sickness with no hospital and overall shock and awe at the beauty, the horrors and the reality of life in southern Bolivia. I am now in Sucre (about 9K feet) and have lots to tell about it but I’ll save that for next post. I’ll be here for about 2.5 weeks.
Pierce...Out
For those who want to look at my pictures from the slide show above and don't want to wait on the images to cycle:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pierce.plumly/Argentina1?feat=directlink
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