Hi Ho, Hi Ho, into the Potosi mines we go

When I was about 12 years old and my brother was around 6, my parents took us on vacation to California. I remember a lot of driving, a lot of complaining, because even though we were going to Disneyland and fun places, we were children and complaining is what children do best. My father decided it was a good idea to take us across the Mexican border to Tijuana, to show us what poverty was like so we could appreciate the vacation we were on and all that we had that came along with being a child from middle-class America.
All I remember from the trip over the border was annoying children surrounding us and begging us to buy chiclets, which I learned fairly recently was not chiclets but chicle, the Spanish word for gum. I didn't feel privileged at all, if anything I felt annoyed at my father for wasting a day of our trip to nearly get us robbed by pesky mexican children.

Today, the point my father was trying to get across to me finally happened.

Melissa and I took a trip 3 hours South from Sucre to a town called Potosi. Potosi is both the  oldest town in Bolivia and the highest town in the world (4,070 meters above sea level), established in the 1600s when mines containing silver, zinc and other minerals were located. I'd been going back and forth about coming here, because while taking a mine tour is extremely interesting, I've been told how it's also extremely depressing, dirty, in a dark tiny tunnel (I am majorly chlostrophobic) and there's nothing else to do in the town besides the mine tour. We realized we had an extra day that could have been spent here or in Sucre, so we decided to get on the bus and give it a shot.  The mines are located in a mountain called Cerro Rico, which is 4,824 meters above sea level, which is about 15,800 feet. That's not even a number!

I will start by saying this. It was the most depressing, interesting, eye-opening and slap in the face reality check I've ever had. The path into the mines is pitch black, short so you need to walk hunched over, with drastic temperature changes as you go into the depths of the mountain. You can't breathe at all. Aside from the lack of oxygen from the height, there is little air and a lot of chemicals inside. The men in the mines work 8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and make the equivalent of about $12 a day. The work they do is insanely hard. They take dynamite to blow up spots to dig for more materials. They load the minerals into primitive carts that weigh a ton, and then have to shove the carts down terrible tracks that the carts fall off of. Its more strenuous manual labor than I can describe, and the conditions are so bad that most miners die around the age of 45.  All I could think about while I was down there was how insane the monetary scale is in comparison with everything I know. I mean, the millions of dollars I've helped spend on advertising while these people kill themselves a little more every day for tens of dollars. I feel like seeing what I did today really puts so many things for me in perspective, and makes me not want  to care or complain about half of the things i do on a regular basis. Once we were outside, there were 3 stray dogs. Two were asleep on top of piles of garbage, the 3rd was scavenging through the trash for food. There was no food in sight, so the poor dog took comfort in playing with a dirty wad of cotton. This topped off what I'd just seen in the mines, and tears rolled down my face for all these poor people and defenseless animals who will never be in a better position in their lives, no matter what they do.

After we left the mines, we did of course have a few amusing occurrences to lighten the mood of our few hours in Potosi. First the engine died on the cab that was taking us to the bus station. The cab kinda glided it's way there since the streets were all downhill. Then we get into the bus station, where it's negative 10 degrees, and we have 3 hours to sit at a restaurant where we're surrounded by people howling like zombies on the floor below us the entire time. I felt like I entered the seventh layer of hell sitting there in that terminal. Although hell would have been way hotter than this. The bus ride was tolerable, but we arrived in La Paz to find it just as cold as the place we left, with a 2 hour wait for the bus (the earlier one doubled booked their seats and took off without us). While we were waiting for the bus i was interviewed by a Bolivian news station about the border crossing. I couldnt understand what he was asking me so i think i lied and told him we were going to Peru (we were not going to Peru). We ended up paying twice as much and then getting shepherded out of the bus station and two blocks away, to stand on the side of the road and wait for a makeshift van to cram us and our backpacks into a space that could accommodate about half the number of people and bags. A woman got on the bus to let us know that we might have trouble getting there because of border issues, and asked us for our email addresses in case of emergency. If our bus got attacked by rocks hurled by protestors I'm not sure where exactly I'd have email access, but we spent the next 4 hours looking for signs of trouble. Luckily, the only problem we had was when were told to get off the bus and the bus went on a raft across a lake and no one had any idea where we were crossing or why, but we all followed on a $0.30 ferry and continued on our way.
We made it to Copacabana, only to be rushed back to La Paz a day early due to yet ANOTHER Bolivan strike. Plans had to be shifted, and now I´m heading to Peru a few days later than planned.  Instead I´m off to Cochabamba.