potosí and the temple of doom (aka cerro rico)

I mean no disrespect by this title. I will admit I had misgivings about visiting the mines of Potosí, having had several discussions with travellers along my ways about the pros and cons of such turismo: ¿irresponsable o no? In hindsight I don´t think the tour was like the "watching monkeys work" that one backpacker described it. At no point did I feel like I was in a zoo, behind a glass window watching the workers perform. This was their workplace and there was no forgetting this. And what a workplace!! As I struggled to breath in the hot dust filled air, inhaling the same toxic gases, crawling through (and sometimes sliding down) the same narrow tunnels they worked their fucking arses off. And while I lent my hand at unladdening a rubber basket of rubble that contained zinc and lead (the mountain´s main offering to the cooperatives now that the silver was drying up) and I helped to clear a track to make way for one of those iron trolleys from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, so they could dump more ore. I felt like passing out. The hard work that these men and boys do now renders the term meaningless when describing anything I do in the future. I would die down there, taken away from my office and my phone and computer and climate controlled airconditioning.

But the I guess they do die down here. While Pedro, our guide, never gave us numbers, accidents did happen, which was not supprising when the technology many of the miners were using came straight from the nineteenth century. The others, well they contracted silicosis pneumonia: la pulmón negra. Our guide himself worked in the mines for five years from when he was teenager. It was only night study and luck that got him a job in tourism and his stairway out of hell. And they call it as much, with little statues of el diablo, the god of the underground, strewn through the complex of tunnels of Cerro Rico. They offer alcohol, coca leaves, cigarettes to the devil on Fridays, asking for safework and a plentiful bounty from his domain. The devil incidently looks like the whiteman.

Pedro said his father had been working down there for 30 years and his grandfather now bedridden, was dying from his life spent down there. Patting his chest, Pedro said he himself had the black lung. Tellingly there is a street, a very long steet in Potosí lined with lawyers´offices and I am told that the demand from widows to get some recompense from the mine cooperatives is quite high.

But barely any of the miners wear gas masks, too expensive, too hot and hard to breath, Pedro said, preferring to chew huge wads of coca leaf that bulge from their cheeks, working anywhere between eight to twelve hour shifts, pushing trolleys that weight several tonnes, shovelling and digging and exploding dynamite (I´ll get to that). The workmen we were talking with, were bemoaning that a trolley had broken down somewhere in the upper levels and had delayed work. They told us that they could be there until ten or even two AM to finish the job and they would still have to return the next morning at nine to begin it all again. Just another day in their six day week.

What choice did the men of Potosí have? Poorly educated, some who spoke only basic spanish (their first language being quechua), Pedro said, and with Bolivia a very poor country, employment was not plentiful and the mine is Potosí´s primer form of work. Without it the town would likely cease to exist. Tourism too was dropping, our guide saying he only took two groups down a week now, which was nowhere near peak.

The miners liked gringitos, Pedro said, getting their cut of our tour fees plus getting the gifts we brought, soft drink, dynamite, smokes and coca leaves.

The experience is not an easy one. I don´t recommend it for claustrophobes or asthmatics but the guidebooks say as much. I do think it is worth it though, for two hours down there it will be a while before you will complain about your job again.

Oh did I mention dynamite? Yes there were the explosions. Pedro at the beginning of our tour told us at the conclusion of our tour we would get to detonate some TNT. Handing different sticks of dynamite at the miners´market, he told us that in Bolivia you can buy and explode it without a license or even giving a name at point of purchase. Children buy it, certain "social groups" in Sucre buy it, pointing to the current unrest there. He laughed, asking whether any of us were married. Perfect solution! Bring your mother-in-law to Bolivia and buy some TNT. KaBOOM.

He shook my stick of dynamite, explosive powder falling down my vest onto my shirt. I winced. Bolivian miners, he said preferred the Bolivian TNT and not the powdery substandard Peruvian stick that I held. Note to anyone thinking of entering the mines of Cerro Rico to strike it rich; buy Bolivian dynamite.

The images of Jesus, the mother Mary and various saints are all over the shop in South America. You cannot ride in a taxi or a bus or walk into a corner store without the some holy visage hanging from the rear view mirror or the cash register. And I now think I know why. They need all the help they can get. A few days ago on the road between the Jungle town of Puerto Maldonado and Cuzco my bus broke down in the middle of the Andes and refused to start. It was approximately ten-to-one and pitch black and freezing cold outside. Now my spanish is bad at the best of times but at this time of morning with no coffee the only word I was understanding was "gringo" and since I was the only foreigner on the bus I guess they were talking about me.

As passing trucks stopped, passengers in small numbers gathered their things together and disappeared into the night. I attempted to have a broken conversation with the driver about the prospects of a pick up. He did not seem optimistic, at least as far as I could understand. Maybe around 3 am a man entered the bus and asked me if I was going to Cuzco. As soon as I answered yes, my backpack was flung onto the roof of a petrol tanker with the words peligro emblasoned across it, and I was invited with a helping hand to climb up. Once aboard I was handed a flimsy blanket, too small for my large gringo frame and with a few moth eaten holes in it.

I was coughing and splurting phlegm like a machine and I seriously thought I might contract pneumonia or something. As I mentioned my spanish is bad at the best of times but I must admit I was supprised at the concern the other passengers showed me. As I understood it one of the older men riding up front near the cabin, who seemed to command some sort of seniority and respect instructed one of the younger passengers, maybe in his 20s to huddle up against me to keep me warm. He then handed me a few sheets of toilet paper to wipe the snot from my face.

The sight of sunrise over the Andes might have been a little more spectacular had it not been for the bighting wind and cold but as we arrived in a small town called Urcos, perhaps 5 hours after the pickup and still a few hours out of Cuzco, the same men helped me with my bags from the tanker and escorted me to the main square to ensure I got on the right bus.

I don`t know their names or where they`re from but if there is God in the heavens above let He/She bless the fuck out of them.

Don`t get me wrong Cuzco is a swell town. It`s touristy yes, when every second local is trying to sell you something, yes. There is even this five-year-old-kid who wanders round Plaza de Armas at 3 am, approaching drunk grigos saying "mis amigos, ¿como estan? Buy my candy." The cusceños seem so willing to sell everything. I mean plastered over every boleto turistico (tourist ticket), a ten day pass to various cultural and archeological sites, is a warning that Peru does not support sex tourism. It may not support it but it`s there.


I was in a bar called UpTown a few days ago with a friend enjoying our free courtesy drink, watching the gringos gyrate up against local cusqueña women. It has been explained to me that these women are not there for a good night, the dancing, the music or just to meet a nice gringo man to take home to introduce to mamá. No they are there working. Called Bricheras, these women sidle up to single (well) gringo men and do almost anything and everything to get drinks out of them. You see, these women are paid commission for the drinks that get sold and some are willing even to go home with these gringos if it means a few more drinks. There is actually graffiti plastered all over the hostel that I was staying at that warns heteros to watch those "Brichera bitches" who`ll take you for everything you`re worth.

But this assumes that these poor gringos are innocent in these transactions. They know exactly what they want and all to happy to take some Peruvian chick for a ride, god forbid they should be exploited. Nothing is ever equal in love and war. And these locals are not just stupid yokels.

And I think this is why I respect the cusqeños and I suppose any population that live in a tourist trap. My friend from New Zealand, Shaun would get pretty irrate whenever some hawker approached us in mid conversation trying to sell us her wares, "you buy, yes", "massage for you hansome," but as I see things they`re just doing their job.

I think Cusco is kinda like an Apartheid state, you have the gringos on one side and the locals on the other and there is a big wall that divides them. There are gringo bars, restaurants and hospedajes and while I am getting this second hand, the local bars here have a general no gringo policy. Sort of like that infamous colonial sign "No dogs and gringos allowed."

Side note: On 31 October my hostel "The Point" hosted a Halloween party. I went dressed as "the death of free speech", with a piece of paper stuck in my hat that read "FREE PRESS" (spanish translation on the opposite side) and wore a noose around my neck. "So it`s metaphorical?" an American called Mike asked me. Yes, I guess so, I replied. "I think you`ve missed the point of halloween, my friend. Halloween isn`t supposed to be subtle or witty". Mike for his part was dressed as an indigenous woman in brightly coloured hat and dress and a baby doll strapped onto his back. There is a fine line between being funny and offensive and he was definately teetering over to the offensive side. A Canadian named Misha entered the room wearing almost exactly the same costume. I slapped my head.

The hostel was opening it`s doors to the general public and as a consequence bumped up it`s drink prices. "Fuck this, let`s go drink on the streets."

So as it transpired it there were two gringos dressed as local women wandering round the streets of Cusco, drunkenly asking kids for money and candy in bad and very loud spanish, another American called Cody dressed as GI Joe, shooting strangers and trying to handcuff them and Joseph dressed as a Robot and I standing back drinking our vodka.

At first I was worried we would be taken the wrong way (or should I say the right way). But no the locals really seemed to find us funny. They were laughing and taking photos, wolf whisting at the boys in drag. We were drawing a crowd and there was even a guy with his handy-cam filming us.

This was great. Cusco the tourist mecca of Peru were being given the opportunity to turn their cameras back on us.

el camino Inka

Everyone has to sacrifice something to walk through the sacred valley of the Incas, and on the last day racing the daybreak to the Sun Gate, the entrance to Machu Picchu, I sacrificed a bowel movement and clean teeth in order to wake at four and had to rely on instinct to shove my shit into my backpack.

These four days of hiking through the path have possibly been the most physically exhausting thing I have ever done. Not only did we need to walk between four and eight hours a day but the altitude made me huff and puff at even the slightest exertion. As we climbed close to the summit of Abra Warmiwañuska (also dubbed Dead Woman´s Pass) on the second day we reached of around 4 200 metres above sea level. Then there was the steep climb down on narrow steps which was made increasingly dangerous as the rain was pelting down. It´s funny how such a little people the Quechua were/are (Incas) could make such big fucking steps.

The tour that I took followed the old path built by the Quechua over 500 years aho, and curved like a rainbow through a variety of ecosystems and archeological sites. Being from the great flat that is Australia, I could help but stop and just stare around me at the glacier capped mountains that just seemed to rise and rise into the clouds. When I use the word sublime, I mean it in the sense that I was belittled by nature to the point of insignificance. I can see why the old Quechua worshiped and sacrificed to these mountains or who they called Amu, the mountain gods.

Walking through dense subtropical jungle, following the path, I came across a clearing. As my eyes drew up I beheld the ruins of what was once a Incan agricultural centre, the terraced farms that rode the mountain up, topped by stone buildings with their doorways that inclined at 13 degrees. I felt like I was in some pre-adolescent boy´s adventure novel, where the hero discovered a lost city in the heart of the jungle.

And in typical colonialist fashion, while we were beaten down by rain and wind, every lunch and dinner we found our camp laid out by an army of faithful porters, 19 in number. They had our dining tent set up, with tea and coffee (with popcorn) available while they prepared our dinner, the best food that I´ve eaten in South America and possibly sometime before I left Australia.

The porters never ceased to amaze me. No more than 5foot5 they carried possible two to three times the weight I carried (they carried possibly between 20 and 30kg) yet they were able to bound up and down steps in sandles or ripoff converse allstars, passing us on their way to set up our camp. This disparity took some getting used to, as I pushed my body to exhausion each day only to reach camp and be treated like some honoured guest. We must have appeared as oddities to them. What the fuck were we doing there? Paying their wages I suppose.

As a side note, our first guide Carlos told us that their were two paths to Machu Picchu from the capital Q`osco. One was a trading route that ran supplies and messages between the capital, Machu Picchu and the various stations between. This was the short and direct way. The longer path that we were walking was the pilgramage. Carlos said that it was a way of cleansing oneself and it was the path that the Inca himself would have taken.

Addendum: I sit on a rock eating a mandarin beside a mountain lake, placing the skin and pips in a side pocket of my backpack. Being neither the fittest or the slowest of the group I`ve found myself hiking alone. Sipping water diluted gatorade I look about me. I watch the tiniest of birds flitter about the water chasing each other as cloud slowly rolls down off the moutain. All I can hear is their songs and all is good.

Further Addendum: On the last night I sat and talked with our second guide Raul as we waited dinner. I asked him about the problems facing the trail. He said that numbers on the trail had been reduced and hikers had to go with an approved tour company and that laws had been introduced to encourage responsible and sustainable conduct. He said that once a year in February the path was closed for a month so that cleaning and restoration could be carried out. Was this enough? I asked. No. Combined with natural erosion and current levels of use geologists, he said, had calculated that the Inca Trail would be gone in approximately ten years. There was a law introduced by the Peruvian government that prohibits porters from carrying more than 20 kgs. When I first heard about this law I thought it was there to protect the welfare of the porters. I was wrong, apparently the porters are happy to carry more weight, as more weight means more money in which to feed their families. No, the law is there to protect the trail. "You saw how the porters run down the mountain?" It is only one of the problems.

Closing the trail to preserve it is not an option. Fundamentally Peru needs tourism. Cusco makes a lot of money off us gringos and this wealth means education and health and public works.

The question is, had I known all of this would I have still gone on the trek? Would others? Should I have known?