Why I hate Potosí

I spent one night in Potosí, and ran back to Sucre for my life (me in the foreground).

Going to Potosí is like the Bolivian equivalent of a visit to West Virginia. It´s a cold, mean, ugly mining town filled with angry miners. What´s worse is that it is the world´s highest city alititude wise, or so I´m told. Why would anybody want to stay there?

Last week when Liz and I first tried to go to Potosí, I met up with an old friend named Singani (do not drink this heavily, or pay like I did) the night before. I still blame it on the food, but due to some poor combination of food and drink, I woke up at 5pm on the day we where meant to leave at 8am. OOPS!

This weekend, we finally resolved to take the 3 hour trip from Sucre to Potosí. Most gringos will hire a taxi for the ride, but of course we decided to flag down a ramshackle Bolivian bus instead. Feeling great about saving 2 bucks on the trip, we arrived in the town and started hunting for a hostal.

The accomodations in Potosí might be extravagant for miners, or really rich tourists, but in our price range we where pretty disappointed. It was already down to about 35 degrees at 7pm, and we where walking around with our away bags from place to place looking for a decent room. We finally decided on some hole a few blocks from the center, and put our bags down on our plastic beds. It was just as cold in the room as outside, and of course hot showers are only available till 4pm.

We went out for Friday night in town, and it seemed like all the bars where closed. We asked around for the hot spots, and kept getting led to closed doors. Everyone was drinking in the street, which would be ok if it wasn´t freezing out and the altitude didn´t give us huge headaches. Finally, we stopped in a bar with neon lights that played the Scorpions Live on DVD on repeat all night, and drank a liter of altitude-agitated beer.

Our mistake was not booking a mine tour before we left Sucre. If you are going to Potosí, use your spanglish and call up Koala tours in advance to book their gringo tour. When we got to the agency before 9am on Saturday, they told us they where booked up for the morning. We had to go with some other shady cheaper agency, and our tour smacked of the $6 discount price we paid.

Other people got private busses to the mines, dynamite explosions, running wheel-carts, former miner tourguides, and battery operated headlamps. I knew we where screwed the moment when our guide had us hop the city bus...

Our tour included only us and our guide, a miniscule Potosína named Helen Phillips. She made a point to tell us about her English heritage, as if we cared. She spoke about 10 words of English, so we opted to take the tour in Spanish instead. My hate towards Helen has to do with how unprepared the tour was - we took the city bus to the mines, then back down to the city to borrow clothes from one of her friends, then back to the mines to borrow headlamps from some other people she might have known. It was so sad to look out the windows of the number 70 bus, twice, and see all the gringos in matching mining outfits buying their dynamite to explode at the mine. In the end, we didn´t see the miners market, didn´t blow up any dynamite, and I was wearing boots that didn´t fit and a second hand windbreaker for security. Yeah.

Our headlamps had to be the worst part of our whole kit. They were 1910 relics that would have worked on gas, if they worked at all. We had gastanks strapped to our backs, seriously, with rubber straps. While we were in the mine, totally alone, our lamps went out in turns. Luckily, Helen had at least 5 matches in her pocket, saving us from imminent death. She had to shake our gaspacks every two minutes to keep them lit. Crazily, she didn´t even have her own lamp.

I had to hold my torch in my hand, because the hardhat securing device was also broken. I chuckled when we met the only 2 miners who were working that Saturday, since they had normal battery operated headlamps and looked at us like we were aliens from the past.

Of course it got worse, when Helen insisted we climb up a steep precipice that she obviously couldn´t even scale herself. I had to touch her butt to get her up the pass, while Liz pulled her from above. She kept giving away our coca leaves to the miners without asking us, and just generally annoying us. Plus, she had an obvious and disturbing fear of mine collapses, and ran us out of at least 3 tunnels. I´m not convinced touring the mines with Helen was, or is, a safe bet.

When we returned to the office, they had the audacity to talk about whether or not we tipped Helen, right in front of us, albeit in Spanish as if we where idiots. This was after Helen had invited herself to lunch with us during our city busride back, suggesting a lunch so expensive Liz, I, and the old lady sitting next to us all exclaimed.
After all this fun, we ditched Helen and got a Chinese lunch special, and hopped the first cab back to Sucre. Libertad! (picture of Tio below, mining god of smokes, booze, and coca leaves)

Comments

[eddie]

I would only go to Potosi during the Ch'utillos Festival in late August. It's like Carnaval without the water balloons and foam. I saw the best folkloric group ever that weekend.

[KARLMOONEY]

great layout, nice photos, in brazil myself, must start a blog. main reason for commenting - my brother is in south america and would like to take the inca trail to machu pichu, prices are very high - 1300 dollars, any advise you can give.

[agustín]

Maybe Potosí was more like Detroit, instead of West Virginia?

And as to the other commenters, it´s true, I have never been anywhere but Cancún, ever, how did you know? Also, I should never express an honest opinion about an experience, because maybe it will offend someone.

If there is something I have written that you don´t like, please comment and make a clear point, and we can all learn something new. I look forward to everyone´s opinion here.

Comment Spam and be banned.

[Andy S.]

I honestly didn't see a problem with this town... until you said they had Scorpions live on loop. Everybody knows that the live version of "Rock You Like a Hurricane" on this DVD is vastly inferior to the version on "Scorpions: World Wide Live" and the bootleg of "Scorpions w/ Krokus: Live at Fillmore West". To say nothing of their lackluster non-threatening guitar licks on "We'll Burn the Sky". And how could they even get the fire started with this version of "Winds of Change" blowing so hard.

Anyway my point is that you bury the lede in this post. It should have been "Why I hate Scorpion Live". This town sounds peachy by comparison.

[Miguel (MABB)]

What are you talking about. West Virginia has some of the most beautiful sights I have seen. The mountains are amazing. Nature is just wonderful.

As for Potosi, the city rivaled once London on the amount of traffick. It was once called the Imperial Village. It was one of the richest places in the Americas.

You got to go back again, and this time in daylight. ;-)

[Don Ball]

Oh, the pain...(he says in his best Dr. Smith).

If a person doesn't have a story like this, then they probably haven't stepped out side the U.S. or at least haven't ventured outside the all-inclusive resort in Cancn.

Of course, very few of us could ever recount our own tales of woe as powerfully as you have. Your story made me glad not to be you (at least for the moment, until your next post).