Greetings All
The end is nigh and we are at Puno on Lake Titicaca having a final rest day before heading back into to Bolivia. And today was a rest day for a change.
The first rest day we had was in Potosi in Bolivia where we went down a silver mine for a visit. This was a working mine and here is a tip for you no matter how bad you think your job might be you don´t want to be a miner in a Bolivian Silver mine. Before hand we got dressed up in protective waterproof clothing (i.e the sweat can´t escape) and helmets with lights.
Then we went to some shops to by “presents” for the miners, yes this was another way to extract money from the gringos but they were unusual presents. You had the choice of bottles of soft drink, bags of coca leaves (the miners chew on them), bottles of 96% alcohol (for the Friday night booze up, bloody hell does that stuff have a kick and a flavour that’s a cross between 80 grit sand paper and sulphuric acid) and finally dynamite kits that consist of a stick of dynamite, a detonator with fuse cord and a pouch of ammonium nitrate. None of these are expensive and can be bought by anyone over the counter. You can guess what most people bought. We trooped off to the mine and went down the main entrance diving to the side when carts of ore were flying towards us from the opposite direction with miners hanging on the back like a scene out of an Indiana Jones film.
dd