Highlights:
Mining Tour
Lowlights:
Terrible food: every meal in Potosi was disgusting, either drenched in oil or completely lacking any resemblance of flavour.
People:
Shiraz: Canadian guy, Collin’s friend (they met earlier in his trip in Peru), absolutely crazy, very intelligent, funny as hell
Alan: English guy, Shiraz’s friend (they crossed paths somewhere on their trip before Potosi), strong English accent, witty.
Activity:
Movies: we watched a few movies during the course of our stay. They included: Jurassic Park (a classic), Milk (Sean Penn was a genius, I absolutely loved the movie), Fargo goods acting and good plot), 28 Days Later (Cillian Murphy, class actor).
Talcing: Shiraz, Alan and Collin were all in on the Talcoholic Anonymous group. Basically they found value in adding Johnson & Johnsons baby powder AKA Talc to your genital area which helped keep it dry. I remember Shiraz saying: “It feels like you have no balls”. We basically wrecked the room by all “Talking up” as well as Alan and Shiraz trying to perform a Talc high five. Collin bought himself a big bottle of Talc the next day.
Big Deal Tours (Mining Tour): our guide Ifrain was an ex-miner so he knew everything there was to know about mining and his passion for the mines was evident. We started off at the miners market where we bought gifts for the miners. I bought a 2L bottle of Fanta, some Coco leaves and a stick of dynamite. Collin bought the same as well as a bottle of 96% alcohol and an extra stick of dynamite. We then headed to the refinery where Ifrain explained the process of flotation and how the metals were extracted from the ore. It was then onwards to the mines where we walked for about 2 hours in some pretty confined spaces. We met many interesting miners along the way and gave them our gifts as we progressed through the mine. We came across the statue of El Tio (AKA the Devil) that is praised and worshipped by the miners in hopes of more silver. After the tour was over Collin asked Ifrain if he could blow up his spare stick of dynamite. He did this in a spectacular fashion. He lit the fuse and put it in his mouth asking us to take photos with him. Then after a minute he asked his colleague to take it further down the hill. His colleague put it into a crevice and then started doing jumping jacks and push ups next to it. He then ran away from it about 30 seconds before it was going to blow. The explosion hit us with a powerful wave, it was incredible.
Foods:
Street meat: we found a street vendor that sold these amazing rolls (Milonesa) filled with chips and a pork fillet. It was greasy as hell, but cheap and delicious. I ate 3 in one night!
Drinks:
Potosi beer: acclaimed to be the highest produced beer in the world. It was nice and strong and cheap as hell. We put back a few of these in our 3 day stay.
Music:
Zeds Dead: a Canadian Dub step band that we listened to every night.
