The second day in Sucre, Monday, everything was blocked. At least three public busses barred every junction inside the town. No cars could pass and the only means of transportation was shoes, bicyle or motorbike. Otherwise, it was very quiet. According to the spanish news reports, this strike should be persist including Tuedsday — the day I had planned to leave for Potosi, only three hours away by bus.
I spent the most of the time on my laptop and only went out for a very late lunch. At 19h, they closed the wifi so it was time for me to leave. When I went onto the streets, the busses had been gone. Happily I asked at a tour operator office about the next day. They said, everything should be normal. I was delighted.
The next morning I took a taxi to the bus terminal. It was not as easy to get there. Maybe it can be considered normal that demonstrations took place and cars were blocking a few, but central roads. Once arrived at the station, I got onto the next bus leaving to Potosi, that drove off only a few minutes afterwards. Good timing. Everything was fine and according to plan.
But then, after around an hour, the bus stopped. People were getting off, wandering around. There obviously was a road blockade. Now and then, the bus would take a leap forward, overtaking one or more busses and lorries that had been queuing up.
Suddenly, the bus dashed to the right to a dirt road for farming and pushed the pedal to the metal. The bus driver was trying to get around the blockade. This was not so easy, as the dirt road was, uhm… a pothole catastrophy. Now and then, the bus had to go back and forth to drive around a tricky bit. Once at a dried up river bed, passengers got off the bus, looking for stones to get the bus past.
And then finally, after around another hour, we were back on the road. We had made it… or? Almost 50km before Potosi, another blockade made it impossible for our bus to continue. We all had to get off, take our luggage and started walking past the blockade, while we saw our bus turning and driving off.
I was in company with a french couple, who had to get to Tupiza today for their tour. Didn’t look too good. After around three or four km of walking in the blinding sun, without water or room service but heavy backpacks on our backs we reached the other side of the blockade… and there was a bus with people sitting around it. Why? Because the driver was absent. Not quite according to plan. But adventures never are.
We waited here for awhile before some other stranded person said that we could go with the truck over there, on the loading area. I always wanted to do that! So for a bargain of 10 Bs., we had a great one-hour ride au plene-air. There were no windows except for the sky above.
Arriving just on the borders to Potosi (because there was another blockage), I took my backpack and started walking down and past the barriers. Then I gladly found a taxi that would take me to my hostel. There I got the bad news that there would be different strikes and blockades from Wednesday until Friday and if I wouldn’t be taking the last bus out at 7pm, I would be stuck. Great.
I just threw my backpack onto my bed and wandered off again. It was almost 15:00 and I was not sure if it was too late for the tour into the silver mines that I knew a few people of my G Adventures group would be participating in. When I arrived at the tour operator office, no-one was there. I asked the guy at the reception of the nearby hotel, if he could ring him up. So he did. And asking for the mining tour, she said that they were just collecting the people right now. So she sent a taxi after me to pick me up and take me to the first station of the tour.
At the miners’ market, I surprised Holly B. and Anna with my unexpected turn-up. This market is a bit strange as anyone can buy explosives as TNT here. We bought some stuff like pure alcohol, coca leaves and cigarettes (the thought of smoking inside the mines was a bit irritating to me, but well…) as gift for the miners.
During the 300 years that people were mining for silver (well, they still do today, among other minerals as zinc or lead), about eight million people died in the mines, most of them slaves from Africa and Indigenous. That’s about 70 people a day, just to set you in the picture. The dust in the mines contains silicon, most of the miners die of silicosis before reaching the age of 40. The water contains arsenic and cyanide. The rocks on the walls are often covered with asbestos fibers. Not talking about the mercury that is used to isolate the silver. Temperatures outside at about 4000m of altitude could be around zero, while inside could go up to 45 deg C or even 60 deg C, depending on how deep you dig.
The galleries and tunnels are not properly propped, so they often snap and tunnels collapse. This usually meant death to the ones on the other side, because no one would care to rescue them. There never have been any maps of the tunnels in the past, nor are there today, and the digging is completely chaotic. It truely is a maze in 3D.
Breathing in these tunnels was hard, at least for me. In a twenty years, people will dig for plastic bottles instead of silver, so many of them are laying around everywhere. Don’t get this wrong: The miners were working inside the shafts while we were in there. They were blowing up dynamite, levering buckets of material around and pushed the wagons around.
We spent about an hour in the maze, visiting El Tio, a devilish figurine that is being worshipped by the miners. I was glad to see the light of day again.
By 6pm, I was back in the hotel where the others stayed and it was a heartly reunion. I decided to take my chances and skip the 7pm bus, which would have been hard to get anyway. Instead I had dinner with them. Karina, the new tour guide said that they would be leaving at 9pm due to the strikes and another G group would be arriving around the same time, heading to Uyuni the next day. She said, that it might be possible to get on their bus leaving at 3am in the night the next day to make it to my appointment in time. That sounded great!
However, as it turned out, they only needed to be in Uyuni a day after me and would be leaving at 8am, which was too late for my tour at 10:30am in Uyuni. Freddy, their guide said that he would contact the bus company to see what he could do.
The next morning after a good sleep in my hostel, went back to see Freddy and he said that there would be a bus leaving at noon (before the blockades would be in place), that I could be taking. Finally a way out? Great! So I headed to the bus terminal as quickly as possible to get a ticket.
There, they said that no bus was leaving at noon. WTF? Instead there MIGHT be one leaving at 19:30 that I could reserve a seat for. I should check in back at 18:00. After leaving the bus station, I saw that people started blocking all the streets and hardly any traffic was moving anymore… how would I get my backpack down there without a taxi? Walking? Sweeeet.
I walked back to the centre and say various demonstrations, which people detonating explosives all the way. Some buildings were splotched with paint. Bolivia was a very nice place to visit, but these demonstrations and strikes of sex-workers, doctors, teachers, conductors, labourers and students kind of annoyed me big time.
Now I’m sitting here in a restaurant, trying to kill some time. Will I be getting out tonight to not miss my tour to Uyuni? Or will I spend some extra days in this dogville?
Stay tuned.
