Potosi, Bolivia

We arrived to the highest city in the world around 1 am. We were 9 of us, so thankfully we had already organized our hostel. The bus ride was ... interesting. It wasn't too bad, but for the complete lack of even a foot of paved road the entire time, bar about the last 5 minutes as we got into town. I had my ipod on nearly full blast, and often couldn't hear it because the rattling was so loud ... a considerable draft, as well!
The next morning I set out early to go to Cerro Rico (Rich Hill) to explore the mines that are still in operation from 1671. There are 10,000 miners who work there today. They used to mine for silver (Potosi used to be the largest and richest city in South America), but now the silver is depleted, so there is only zinc left. We arrived to the mines clad in our jumpsuits head to foot, giant rubber boots, face masks and headlamps. We had stopped on the way to buy gifts for the miners: cocoa leaves (chewed for the altitude and suppresses hunger- so they say, didn't work for me!), juice, cigarettes (handmade, unfiltered), 96% alcohol (comes in a flimsy plastic bottle), and last but not least, TNT so we could see an explosion.
The mine has 300 entrances, and we set off into one walking. Within a minute we were already hunched over and spent the next few hours like this, as the tunnel gets very dark and very small very quickly. We were trudging through several inches of muddy water for much of the time, and I was very grateful that my boots didn't leak. Around us the walls varied from grey to brown to tan to red to orange, etc., and were plastered in asbestos ... mmmm. We hit our heads a lot. Inside was like a maze- there were tunnels in every direction, and as we got deeper in, the tunnels got increasinly smaller.
Every few minutes our guide would pull us off into an alcove when she heard a cart coming. A full cart weighs 2.5 tons and needs four men to move it, two pulling it with ropes, and two pushing. Several times they were coming so fast that we had to run to get to a space to get out of their way. In order for us to be able to take pictures, we gave them the "gifts" (bribes, more like). At one point we climbed up a ladder to another tunnel, then climbed straight down 200 meters. It was very hot and stuffy and somewhat hard to breathe, but our guide knew a miner there who stopped to talk to us for about 10 minutes. They work 14 plus hour days, 6 days a week in these backbreaking conditions. Many work in groups, but he was working alone, and then will hire help for a day to haul all of his finds out. We could not stay too long as it was difficult for us to breathe, so we crawled back up out the steep tunnel.
On the way out, we stopped at one of their break spots to see their mining God: "Dios", paid our respects to him by drinking some of the 96% alcohol, and learned a bit more about the mines. Outside we set off the TNT-- it was much bigger and louder than I had expected, but very cool.
In the afternoon I just explored and sampled quite a bit of the local cuisine off the streets and had a great day. I took an evening bus to La Paz.