The deadly beauty of Bolivia

Boooom! A few hundred meters away, a load of dynamite goes off, I can hear the muffled noise of the explosion, but it doesn’t really impress me as I am way more worried to find my group again. Something must have exploded in my shaft as well, there is so much dust in the air it that I can hardly see a meter away. With my headlamp I make some light on the floor, I really don’t want to step into a hole or into one of those crazily poisonous yellow puddles. I walk bent over, with one hand I hold my helmet, trying to avoid hitting the ceiling, with the other hand I hold my T-shirt in front of my mouth, but the altitude and the bad ventilation in my shaft give me the terrible feeling of suffocating. I definitely hadn’t imagined Potosi to be that that sick!

A few days earlier I had crossed the Bolivian border and I had immediately booked a three-day tour through Uyuni. The tour was great, it was so spectacular that it did not take me a long time to forget about all the bad mood I had when I left Argentina: we saw landscapes, that were so beautiful that they would have been even too kitschy for an Asian restaurants wall decoration. On our trip, we went through snow, we passed bubbling volcanic fields, we went through plantations and through deserts, that just looked like Salvador Dali’s paintings. However, the absolute highlight was Uyuni itself. The white soils of the salt flats seemed endless and, as we were in the middle of the raining season, they were flooded with water which showed the reflections of the clouds. It was almost impossible to spot the horizon, sky and earth became the same thing and me, I had literally the feeling of walking in heaven. And now, just a few days later, all of a sudden, I was in hell.

As I find my group, our mine tour continues. We climb up a few rickety ladders and balance over narrow and unsecured wooden beams, past hundred of meters deep holes, until we finally reach the end of the shaft where a young miner puts together a few dozen dynamite bars, just as if they were the toys from the surprise egg. I look over at Guillermo – he had been my travel buddy since Uyuni – and see that he doesn’t look very relaxed either. On the way back, we walk past two miners that push a 1500kg wagon towards the exit. Their whole body is black and full of dirt, their faces look contorted and without any emotions, just like the ones of the Berlin party people on a Monday morning, and the expression of their eyes, just empty, probably paralyzed by the coca leaves and the pure alcohol they consume just before starting their shift. About an hour later, we finally make it to the outside again. As I look to the group, I can see we are all visibly relaxed.

Potosi once used to be one of the richest cities in South America. During colonial times, more than fifty percent of all silver worldwide came from the Cerro Rico, the almost 4800m high mountain, which constantly looks over the city. But the silver rush did not only cause wealth, it also brought a lot of misery. Since the beginning of the exploitation, millions of people have left their lives in the mountain, and even today, there are miners dying almost every week. Those who do not have accidents in one of the 250 shafts, will eventually be affected by deadly illnesses: the average life expectancy, once you start to work in a mine, is about 20, maybe 25 years. Many of the young workers – some of them start at the age of 12 as there are not many alternatives around – will probably not even get to celebrate their 40th birthday. The mines of Potosi were without any doubt the strongest experience of my trip so far, anything but beautiful, but I’m glad to have experienced them and now, I do understand why Che Guevara had the strong urge to free Bolivia.

After Potosi, Guillermo and I continue our trip  to Sucre, Bolivia’s official capital. Sucre is idyllically beautiful and the ideal place to experience the Carnival. When I find out that Felipe, my Chilean friend I met in Paraguay, is around as well, nothing seems to be able to stop us. During the day we observe the different carnival clubs and their brass bands as they walk through the streets and get drunk, while spraying foam and throwing water bombs at each other. In the evening we copy them. As we go out with an Argentinean theatre group, two guitars and three bottles of wine are enough to transform a sleepy plaza in the center of Sucre into a vibrating Latino party. I love Sucre, I had planned to stay only two nights, I ended up staying six!

Most of Bolivia is higher than the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany. If I get below 3000m, it feels like being in the flat Netherlands. It is impressive how life takes place at altitude, well and the most impressive place is La Paz, one of the highest cities in the world. Actually it has quite a bad reputation, there is supposed to be a lot of crime, a lot of cocaine and way too much traffic, but when I arrive, I am rather surprised: the city stretches over a huge valley, there are houses all over the place and the city is surrounded by stunningly beautiful mountains. Since there is no way to build a subway in La Paz, some Austrians engineers decided to put a few gondola lifts into the city, a trip with the “Teleférico” is an absolute urban highlight!

Not far away from La Paz  you can find the Ruta de la muerte, a.k.a. death road, once the most dangerous road in the world. Until a decade ago, every single year up to 300 travellers disappeared on the section between La Cumbre and Yolosa, that is often just about 3m wide. Nowadays there is a somewhat safer alternative route and death road is rather popular amongst tourists and mountain bikers. I am getting excited about the idea and decide to try my luck. The road starts at almost 5000m, it is freaking cold up there. As we ride down, we bike through flooded sections just next to hundreds of meters deep abysses, we are soaked by waterfalls and we even experience a landslide. The Ruta de la muerte is 56km long and has an altitude difference of almost 3500m, which pretty much means that at every stopover it gets warmer and it is easier to breathe. When we arrive in Yolosa, I am on fire, probably pumped by the great amount of oxygen in my body, I am so happy that I am not even bothered by the mosquitoes that are around in the valley. I had been high up in the Andes for several weeks now and I had almost forgotten how summer feels like. As I am sitting on the edge of the swimming pool in Yolosa, I decide that it is time to leave the mountains and to continue my travel to Peru.

On my way to the Peruvian border, I make one more stopover at Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, before hopping on the night bus to Cusco. Bolivia was an absolute surprise, I had never expected to experience such a breathtaking nature and to meet so many friendly people, the mines and the Death Road have reactivated my adrenal glands and even the food was not as bad as feared. With a feeling of absolute satisfaction, I lean into my seat and start chatting to the Australian couple and the Mexican pensioner travel group sitting next to me. Only after 15 minutes I notice that I am speaking Spanish, it’s the first time that I feel kind of fluent in a conversation. It looks like I have taken away a lot more from Bolivia than what I had imagined …