Potosi - Tom's Explosive Hands and Michaela's fall to Altitude!!!

After spending a lovely Christmas in La Paz it was time to move on to a little town called Potosi. It’s claim to fame is that it’s the worlds highest city at 4070m and you felt every metre of it!!!!! You certainly wouldn’t make a quick dash to the shops without your lungs feeling it! Michaela was suffering from the altitude and had to have a bit of oxygen and some love from her duvet!! So Tom headed off on his own to see what made this town the wealthiest in South America during the Spanish reign - The Silver Mines.

There is still about 2,000 miners working there every day. There is no machinery so it is very hard manual labour and the best they can hope to earn in a day is about 10 US dollars!!!!! It would hardly buy them 2 sticks of dynamite!!! On the way to the mines we stopped at a local market to buy some gifts for the miners, as a group we got some coco leaves, biscuits and glycerine and TNT to make the DYNAMITE!!

It was frightening to see the conditions they had to work in, very cramped spaces, lots of dust and arsenic exposure. Millions of miners have died since it’s first opening. The average life expectancy of a miner is early 40’s. There were big and small mines and the miners had to decide which ones to work in. They could earn more money in the big mines but the risks on their life was much higher. I just can’t imagine how hard that decision must have been for them. The town had little other industry so generation after generation this was the only option for these families.

After the tour we got the chance to get our hands on some explosives!! We used the glycerine, TNT and a fuse to make some Dynamite. We lit it and blew up a small hole in the side of the mountain...unfortuntely no silver was found so the rest of the trip will have to be budgeted tightly - lets get out the excel sheets!!! While we were preparing the explosives the guide admired my 'explosive hands' and offered me a job!!