After a relaxing morning and a lunch of llama meat we booked an afternoon tour to the silver mines of Potosi.
Silver, lead and zinc are mined but copper is also found here. Before our tour into the mine we bought gifts for the proud miners and saw how the ore is processed.
Inside the mines, Martijn helped push a cart about 20 feet and it felt very heavy. The walk through the mines was also very difficult especially for Martijn who is about twice the height of the average miner.
We visited El Tio, and drank 96% alcohol in his honor. The miner offer 96% alcohol so that El Tio can bless them with 96% pure silver.
Once we made it out we were treated to a once in a lifetime experience- lighting, holding and watching dynamite explode.
Ana had to go to the bathroom from the beginning of the tour, which lasted 2 hours walking hunched over in the mines. When the dynamite exploded, her fight or flight response made her body completely forget about the urge to go to the bathroom (which was getting to the point of cramping) and instead it made her yell loudly, and jump about 3 feet in the air (hence the blurry photo). About 15 minutes after the explosion, when Ana felt safe again, the urge to go was back with a vengeance. Ana had an amazing out of the textbook experience of a biological phenomena (to the point where bodily functions shut down) she had always studied but never experienced as textbook examples deal with tigers in the jungle. As a side note Martijn wants to make it clear that it was Ana’s yell that scared him, not the dynamite exploding! Sure.
For dinner we had street food at a local stand that was serving milanesa of chicken sandwiches with french-fries. For dessert we headed to a café we were told about and had a slice of banana cake and a submarine- a piece of chocolate praline in hot milk.
Our 2.5 km route through the mountain to the other side.
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