Potosí tour - then off to Uyuni

We were collected by Helen, a proud Chechuan woman learning English - from an Australian! She took us on a walking tour of the old city up at the central plaza where we walked to yesterday. We took a local bus part of the way and then walked streets we hadn't walked yesterday. The light was lovely.

She took us across the 'border' to where the mine workers live; it is divided into areas designated according to where people have come from e.g. Cusco, Arequipa, etc. Apparently there are people from Africa here too but she was somewhat dismissive of these and said they can't really work in the mines because it is too cold for them.

The mines here helped turn this into an Imperial City, as the Spanish called it, as big and rich as Madrid. Though the wealth has faded since colonial times, there are still opulent churches and old mansions that attest to the city's glory days.

Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, Potosí was just a small village in the Andes. Between 1542 and 1545, however, the biggest silver lodes in the New World were discovered in the Cerro de Potosí (known also as the Cerro Rico), a mountain located just to the south of the city. The Spanish called the mountain Cerro Rico (or Rich Mountain) for the silver they extracted from the mountain. The discovery resulted in the transformation of this tiny village into the largest industrial complex of the 16th century.

Some 3 million Quechua Indians were put to work here over the years. Hundreds of thousands died, casualties of cave-ins, or killed by overwork, hunger and disease - and especially dust-related disease.

Helen gave us a heartfelt view of the human tragedy of the mines: only just last week, 2 people were killed. She says when the government nationalised, the workers took over the mines but conditions did not improve and the so-called workers' co-operatives have not taken on improving conditions; she says they are in it for what they can get for themselves. She is NOT a fan of (President) Morales.

We visited the main plaza - Plaza 10 de la Noviembre - and admired lovely Spanish colonial buildings along the way including the Convent of Santa Teresa that we visited late yesterday.

Then to the Casa de la Moneda which is considered the most important civil building in Latin America. Actually it is a museum and historical archive - since 1940. One can see the first coins minted in silver and the minting machines from different periods. There is also a fine selection of religious paintings from different schools of art and different art periods. 

The silver has now gone - well, most of it, it seems; the move from silver coins to using blends of copper, zinc and nickel subsequently occurred. And now other countries make their own currency because it is viable for them to do so. So the mint here became obsolete.



Another local woman (organised by Helen) picked us up outside the museo and we walked back through labyrinthine streets and markets to return to the hotel, passing the churches of San Lorenzo and San Bernardo and past the statue of the liberator Simón Bolívar on the way.

By the way, talking of markets, I must tell this story against myself. Yesterday TOP bought a lock for her suitcase from a street stall and, trying to be helpful, I thought I'd check the keys worked first and I managed to close the lock in such a way that you couldn’t reopen the suitcase, for awhile. Well! I was horrified but the Chechuan woman at the stall, after an initial look of amazement, burst out laughing and we were soon all 'rolling around the aisles' while the other stall holders looked on in bewilderment. Hilarious!

At 11:30 a.m. We go to the bus station to go to Uyuni.