Potosi and the Miners

We then travelled along an extremely bumpy road to Potosi. It took about 6 hours on a bus!

We had a tour of the Mint Factory that documented the history of making coins in Bolivia, using the silver from the local mountain. We had an annoying tour guide who didn´t like tourists and constantly told us off for being late! It was an interesting tour though!

In the afternoon, we travelled to the Silver Mine. We stopped en route to get into our ´miner´clothes - mine consisted of yellow trousers with a red jacket, orange helmet and wellies! We then arrived at the mine and bought some supplies for the miners that we´d come across - mainly biscuits, cocoa leaves, ciagarettes and the all important dynamite! We then entered the mines and walke around for a bit (avoiding the large holes on the floors and ducking as the route became quite small).

We then walked down to the next level and met some miners - one of them was 17 and had been working in the mines since he was 12! We carried on walking along some very narrow ledges and had to climb up steep holes in the roof. It was quite scary at times, when there was a massive hole next to you! It also showed how bad the conditions are for the miners!