This weekend was our first road trip. We flew out of La Paz Friday morning on a short flight to Sucre, the other capital of Bolivia. We only stayed in Sucre for about an hour, had a short lunch and then took two taxis up the windy mountain road to Potosí. We stayed in Potosí for about a day. The town has a ton of interesting history, being that it was once the richest city in the world and the center of the Spanish empire, due to the giant mountain full of silver. We went to a couple of museums and churches that were all very impressive. However, I was bothered the whole time we were there, especially when we took a trip up to the miners market. Men and young boys, some as young as ten, work in exceedingly dangerous conditions in the mines every day for 12 to 24 hour shifts. There is no communication or organization between the mining cooperatives, so at any time two groups of miners could be tunneling towards the same point, blowing up dynamite without the other group's knowledge. Besides the incredible danger, the miners can almost certainly count on early death from Black Lung. The horrible thing is that this is the only way these people can make even enough money to barely survive. They don't have a choice. We decided not to do a mine tour, not just because of the danger, but because it seemed to all of us very intrusive to these people who are just trying to make a living. I felt that way even walking through the miners market. For anyone who is interested, there's a very good documentary on the mines in Potosí called The Devil's Miner. It follows two young boys and their lives as miners. Although there's a lot of tourism, its just so jarring to see the tremendous poverty of the city and realize how much has been taken from it and its citizens. One of the places we toured was one of the oldest convents in Latin America. Spanish elites used to send their daughters their with enormous dowries to be cloistered for the rest of their lives. It was a way of establishing ties between the New World and the Old World. Also very sad, but the convent itself is beautiful. The church has an enormous altar made of gold, or at least gold leaf. We could've spent all day in there; it was huge and there were so many things to look at. We all agreed that Potosí was definitely haunted though. Especially the old mint that we toured. It was also enormous, but so many people were forced into working there too. At one place, you can see footprints of people who were chained to a column for so long that their feet rubbed imprints into the wood. Totally some bad spirits.
We had an adventure on the way back from Potosí. About 20 kilometers from Sucre, we ran into a roadblock. The highway had been blocked off due to a road race haha. So everyone who was traveling on either side just had to park their cars and wait until it was over. There wasn't any notice or anything. Just some racers who dragged a limb and some rocks onto the highway and stopped traffic for awhile. There's another huge race today in Sucre, so the entire town has been gathered around the plaza. Most places are closed, and lots of the roads are blocked off here too. We were literally standing on the side walk with race cars speeding past right in front of us. Ridiculous. We went up to a church at the top of the town today. You could see the entire city from there. It was beautiful. They also had a nice little cafe where you could sit and have lunch and look over the city.
We headed back to La Paz this morning and all frantically tried to finish up our research designs that were due at six tonight. I think we're all really nervous about this project. We're getting ready to start on another busy week of class!
PS: I really wanted to add pictures to this post, because I took a lot, but the internet is being super slow, so I'll just have to try again tomorrow
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