Potosí - Silver, Gold and Chicken
Hola from Bolivia! I am finally in my third new country on this trip, one of the only landlocked nations in the Americas and home to some of the highest cities in the world. My first stop is Potosí, the highest of the bunch. At 4,000m above sea level, this town is tough to get to grips with but well worth the effort.
For starters, this town is much older than anything I have seen so far. While it is true that Santiago and La Serena were set up earlier, they didn't see much action until later in their history. By contrast, Potosí was a thriving town from the day it was founded by the Spanish due to the presence of silver in the mountain overlooking the town, appropriately named Cerro Rico (rich hill), and the Incas were in the area long before that for the same reason. Evidence of those glory days is all around in the form of churches. There are at least 30 large churches or cathedrals in the city centre alone, and some of them show a fascinating fusion of Catholic tradition and native symbology.
As it happened, I arrived with some friends on a very important weekend for Potosí - graduation day. On Saturday, all the children of the local high schools paraded the streets doing traditional dances with brass bands accompanying them. I was very impressed that these teenagers could handle playing brass at such high altitudes, then even more so when I came back from lunch two hours later to find some of the same kids still marching!
Things got even bigger at night when the alumni came out to parade. We stumbled across the parade of one of the most prestigious schools, Pichincha, when we were looking for another bar to go to that night, and what a sight it was. Instead of the somewhat unenthusiastic graduates, alumni from years past put on fancy marching outfits and made a spectacular entrance to the main square. This was followed by a huge party on the steps of the cathedral for all the Pichincha past and present with the brass bands playing school anthems until the small hours. These guys seemed very happy to have a few gringos come to join the party and kept on giving us drinks and trying to teach us the words to their songs. All fun and games at the time, but the hangover at altitude was fearsome the next day.
On the culinary side of things, we made a great discovery on our first day of the 'Broaster' restaurants. Wondering down the street on a lunch mission, we found a place which smelled amazing and had a cartoon of a muscled up chicken out the front. Curious, we went inside and the guy told us that we could have a plate for 13 Bolivianos ($2.50). This was stunning after paying 5 times that for dinner in the tourist street the night before, so we ordered and were served a huge plate with a quarter roast chicken, fries, rice, spaghetti and chutney. It even came with a drink! May my arteries forgive me, because these places are everywhere and are often cheaper than cooking for yourself.
There was one thing that I found off-putting about this town: mine tours. In modern days, the silver supply in the area is much depleted but there is still enough around for local workers to form collectives to prospect sections of Cerro Rico. It's dangerous, dirty work, where risks are high and payoffs not guaranteed, where the collectives are always hoping to strike that deep seam of silver that will get them out of the mine. Somehow this has become a backpacker attraction in recent years, with most hostels and tour agencies offering guided tours of the mines led by 'ex-miners' (sometimes genuine, often not). According to some people who did them, you get kitted up with overalls and a helmet, then follow some miners from a collective around their daily work. To me, this was incredibly distasteful. All of the people that did it came back gushing about how awful the conditions were, how those poor miners were suffering in the mine, and frankly it seemed like a genuinely crappy working situation was being turned into working-class pornography for the benefit of tourists from countries with stronger wages and labour laws. Not to mention the fact that there are people in our home countries who work in mines where the conditions are still pretty poor whom I doubt many of the class-tourists gave a second thought to.
Besides that, I will say that Potosí is a severely underrated place that too many people skip through. I had a fantastic time here and I feel like I barely scratched the surface of what the area has to offer. Unfortunately, I had to deal with a pressing wardrobe crisis as my only pair of trousers were badly ripped on the Salar tour and clothes are surprisingly expensive in this otherwise cheap country. Off to Sucre now to find a replacement pair, hasta luego!
For starters, this town is much older than anything I have seen so far. While it is true that Santiago and La Serena were set up earlier, they didn't see much action until later in their history. By contrast, Potosí was a thriving town from the day it was founded by the Spanish due to the presence of silver in the mountain overlooking the town, appropriately named Cerro Rico (rich hill), and the Incas were in the area long before that for the same reason. Evidence of those glory days is all around in the form of churches. There are at least 30 large churches or cathedrals in the city centre alone, and some of them show a fascinating fusion of Catholic tradition and native symbology.
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| I didn't take many good photos in Potosi, but this one shows one of the best cathedral fronts |
As it happened, I arrived with some friends on a very important weekend for Potosí - graduation day. On Saturday, all the children of the local high schools paraded the streets doing traditional dances with brass bands accompanying them. I was very impressed that these teenagers could handle playing brass at such high altitudes, then even more so when I came back from lunch two hours later to find some of the same kids still marching!
Things got even bigger at night when the alumni came out to parade. We stumbled across the parade of one of the most prestigious schools, Pichincha, when we were looking for another bar to go to that night, and what a sight it was. Instead of the somewhat unenthusiastic graduates, alumni from years past put on fancy marching outfits and made a spectacular entrance to the main square. This was followed by a huge party on the steps of the cathedral for all the Pichincha past and present with the brass bands playing school anthems until the small hours. These guys seemed very happy to have a few gringos come to join the party and kept on giving us drinks and trying to teach us the words to their songs. All fun and games at the time, but the hangover at altitude was fearsome the next day.
On the culinary side of things, we made a great discovery on our first day of the 'Broaster' restaurants. Wondering down the street on a lunch mission, we found a place which smelled amazing and had a cartoon of a muscled up chicken out the front. Curious, we went inside and the guy told us that we could have a plate for 13 Bolivianos ($2.50). This was stunning after paying 5 times that for dinner in the tourist street the night before, so we ordered and were served a huge plate with a quarter roast chicken, fries, rice, spaghetti and chutney. It even came with a drink! May my arteries forgive me, because these places are everywhere and are often cheaper than cooking for yourself.
There was one thing that I found off-putting about this town: mine tours. In modern days, the silver supply in the area is much depleted but there is still enough around for local workers to form collectives to prospect sections of Cerro Rico. It's dangerous, dirty work, where risks are high and payoffs not guaranteed, where the collectives are always hoping to strike that deep seam of silver that will get them out of the mine. Somehow this has become a backpacker attraction in recent years, with most hostels and tour agencies offering guided tours of the mines led by 'ex-miners' (sometimes genuine, often not). According to some people who did them, you get kitted up with overalls and a helmet, then follow some miners from a collective around their daily work. To me, this was incredibly distasteful. All of the people that did it came back gushing about how awful the conditions were, how those poor miners were suffering in the mine, and frankly it seemed like a genuinely crappy working situation was being turned into working-class pornography for the benefit of tourists from countries with stronger wages and labour laws. Not to mention the fact that there are people in our home countries who work in mines where the conditions are still pretty poor whom I doubt many of the class-tourists gave a second thought to.
Besides that, I will say that Potosí is a severely underrated place that too many people skip through. I had a fantastic time here and I feel like I barely scratched the surface of what the area has to offer. Unfortunately, I had to deal with a pressing wardrobe crisis as my only pair of trousers were badly ripped on the Salar tour and clothes are surprisingly expensive in this otherwise cheap country. Off to Sucre now to find a replacement pair, hasta luego!
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