Dust-filled tunnels and salt-covered plains.

Normally I don't sleep well at all on buses, so I try to avoid night buses. Was much more convenient in this case though, and I actually felt kinda comfortable. Then it got dark, and they turned the heating off, so the bus was basically a huge freezer on wheels. Didn't matter too much though, coz I arrived to Potosí on Sunday, and all the miners are drunk on Saturday/Sunday, so they don't work and the tours don't run (apparently on Monday many of them are hungover and play football instead of working, so it wasn't too busy when I went the next day).

So I slept most of the day I arrived in Potosí and had a nice 4pm breakfast.

The next day it was up early-ish to go see the mountain of mines. The first stop was at the "warehouse" to get kitted out as miners for a few hours (pants, jacket, headlamp, gumboots). In the waiting area they painted this on the wall:

They might not win much, but they're proud of it when they do. I'm assuming the game was played at La Paz and the Argentines got fucked by the altitude. The best way I can think of to translate "Para no olvidar" is "Lest We Forget." Close enough.

After the warehouse we visited the miners' market, a street of little stores like this one, where the miners can buy everything they need. Everything from safety gear to the 96% alcohol they pound all day with their coca leaves.

Also, dynamite. In Bolivia (or Potosí, at least) the sale of dynamite is totally unregulated, anyone at all can walk in and buy it. It's reasonably safe as long as you don't put in a fuse and light it. If you wanted you could eat it and the worst that'd happen would be you might get a little sick.

Ready to blow.

Strap one of those pink guys on the side to make your explosion bigger. It cost about NZD4 for dynamite, fuse, and the pink stuff whose name I've forgotten. 

OG carbide lamp. These days they use electric lanterns, but they still use these to detect the presence of harmful gases. Beats using a bird... 

The next stop was one of 30 or so processing plants for the ore. The 15,000 miners in Potosí join one of several collectives, and work in groups ranging from 1 - 30. The groups work whatever hours they want, and sell their ore to whichever processor they choose.

Ore after being crushed a bit.

The ore contains silver, lead and zinc, all of which are visible to the trained eye.

Ball mill to crush the ore into powder. The cylinder is full of steel balls which fly around smashing the ore to pieces, which then filter out the bottom.

These two photos are of two chemical processes to get purer end products.

Centifuge to separate the zinc from the silver/lead.

Scraping the silver/lead mix off the top of some kind of liquid.

Silver/lead brew that gets exported from Potosí for further separation.

Bottom: tub of zinc sludge. Top: tub of silver/lead sludge.

Then it was time to go up to the mine. The entire mountain below is criss-crossed with mines from different companies/collectives, and has been mined since the Spanish arrived and put the natives to work in what had to be horrendous conditions. Because of the mountain (called the "Cerro Rico," or "rich mountain"), the Spanish mint was located in Potosí for a long while. Due to diminishing supplies of indigenous workers, the colonials started bringing African slaves to work in the mines and mint, many of which died there, one would assume.

To this day, the Potosí mine is one of the largest silver mines in the world, though mining there is only expected to be economically for another few years. Would certainly be interesting visiting the city when the mines are dried up. The original mint itself is retained as a museum in the city.

Group of miners with their (3-ton) cart full of ore. I believe the guide said the average daily extraction for a group would be 20 or so of these carts.

The entrance to the mine. The dark around the top and sides is llama blood, from the llamas sacrificed to the tíos ("uncles," the pagan "gods" still worshiped by miners; they believe in some combination of Christianity and their traditional beliefs) of the mine, the day before I arrived.

Calcium-something deposits on the roof.

Original brickwork put in hundreds of years ago by Inca workers to prevent cave-ins.

The guide's helmet.

We climbed up the rockfall in the front there, and then doubled back up a ladder made of bits of 4*4 wedged into the shaft, to go say hello to this guy:

Drilling the 4th of 14th holes for dynamite that was to be exploded in the afternoon. This guy was 35, and had worked in the mine for 21 years. Apparently there was someone elsewhere that was 56 and had worked there for more than 40 years. Between the 4 miners that die every month from accidents, and the 10 a month from silicosis and other diseases, the life expectancy of potosino miners is around 50 years.

Miners winching a 30-50kg bag of ore up 40m. The far one was a young French guy staying in my hostel, who'd been working there for a month and planned to stay another couple of weeks at least. Would be quite the experience to help fund a long trip, but another guy in the hostel said he got around USD60 in a week. The miners themselves supposedly get around USD100/week, significantly more than the Bolivian average, though it's not exactly safe...

Vein of something or other. 

The first of 2 tíos we visited, surrounded by his offerings of cigarettes, coca leaves, and various beverages.

The Catholic altar of this particular mine, also with offerings. For whatever reason the figurehead gets taken out of the mine twice a year, but the tíos never leave.

The second, slightly bigger, tío we saw. I believe the guide said there were 5 in total in this mine (and there's probably hundreds of mines).

A couple of guys loading their ore onto a truck to be taken down and sold. Each group of miners has a little bay where they dump their ore, then they contract a truck to come and pick it up for sale.

So my day in Potosí was pretty interesting, and I think I've said most of what I wanna say about it. It's hugely interesting seeing the effects of capitalism and a life of luxury on poorer parts of the world. Chances are this mine, and its many jobs, wouldn't exist if not for demand for jewellery, or, conversely, if everyone wasn't so stingy the miners could work in better conditions...

In any case, the next day I got a bus in the morning to Uyuni, one of the access points to the famous Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni salt flats). The following morning, I left on a 3 day tour through the salar. First stop: the train cemetery next to Uyuni, stocked with trains from the train system used to transport minerals to the Pacific during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Sabotage by local indigenous populations and the collapse of the mining industry led to the train system being abandoned in the 40s, and the trains were left outside Uyuni. I could've spent hours climbing around the trains checking them out. We had about 20 minutes, I hate organised tours.

Looking back towards Uyuni.

No idea what this thing was...

"Love is craziness."

After the train cemetery, it was off to the salar itself, with a visit to a salt processing shop after a tasty lunch.

Firewood spots for the salt-drying oven.

Salt gets spread here to dry.

Then ground in the mill at the bottom, piled up, bagged, and sealed as shown.

In the town there was also a small "salt museum."

dat salt's gotta be harsh on your wheels. The Bolivians also seemed pretty proud (they had loads of stickers everywhere) of the fact that the Dakar rally went through their country.

Glorious tourist photos on the salar.

Next to the only salt hotel that's actually on the salar.

My hand was almost in the right place...

A taste of the rainy season on the salar.

Walking on the "House of the Inca," an island in the middle of the salar. Apparently the formation of the salar began about 100,000 years ago, when the mountains to the west rose up and formed a huge inland sea, with no outlet to the ocean. The whole thing drained towards the south (from everywhere between Lake Atacama and the salar), slowly drying at the southern end and leaving the salt behind. Now it's up to 120m deep, and riddled with caves and underground briny rivers. Nowadays the salar is used to extract salt (obviously), as well as being the largest deposit of lithium in the world. It's also so flat (variations in altitude over the 10,000sq km are less than 1m. By way of comparison, Lake Taupo is a measly 616sq km!) that orbiting satellites use it to calibrate their altitude.

Had to make a tower thing on the top.

Arch of ancient coral. Poor corals.

After the House of the Inca we basically drove straight to the first place we stayed, just off the side of the salar. Turns out the 3-day salar tour only spends a few hours on the salar, but it was pretty amazing while it lasted. As the sun set, it got bitterly cold, and all the warm clothes came out. The moon was out and strong, so no star photos, just bed.

In the morning we visited a bunch of lagoons and such on the way to our next accommodation.

Llamas!

First time I'd touched snow the whole trip, yusss.

The tour agency I went with was called Red Planet, which was supposedly named after this spot. Wasn't too red when we were there though. 

The rock tree.

The Red Lagoon. It wasn't sunny enough for the algae to bloom much, but in a couple of moments when the wind rose it was nice and red. The flamingos were cool though. 

On the way to the "hostel" we stayed in, which had longdrops and a generator for power until about 9:30, we stopped to see some geysers, but the sun had already set, and they basically looked like big pools of steaming water. It was fucking cold, and probably the best bit was watching our shadows from the headlights on the steam. When we got to the hostel, we had dinner, then went for a soak in the hot pool next door, under the stars and the moon. Beautiful, and the perfect temperature.

In the morning we got up nice and early, and I watched the sunrise:

After breakfast we headed off to see one last lagoon, before splitting between those who were returning to Uyuni, and those who (like me) were going on to Chile. We also stopped at the Salvador Dali Desert. Apparently when it's not covered in snow the mountains are covered in trippy shapes and colours.

Trilobytes found in the Dali Desert.

The Green Lagoon, the last we stopped by before heading off to Chile. Didn't look very green...

A few hours later we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, in the Atacama Desert, the driest in the world. San Pedro is basically just a handful of roads with loads of hostels, restaurants and tour agencies. I went with a couple other people from the tour to a nice hostel that was cheaper than the rest, and was blown away by how much more expensive than all the rest of the countries I've been to Chile is. Then we went to lunch and the impression deepened. Time to get frugal...