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big black hole of death

after hearing about the potosi mines from every mad aussie on our trip keith was hooked,especially after hearing that you can blow up dynamite. i wasnt so sure having a mild clostrophobia but went along for the educational aspect.

just to give you an idea about this place, the average life for a miner is about 45 he will generally die of whats known as miners lung or black lung and the main reason for people to go to the mines in potosi are the fact that their is no other jobs so the risks are put to the wayside and boys as young as 10 will happily go to work the mines with their fathers and grandfathers if still living. women are not allowed in the mine (well locals anyways) partly because of bad luck and partly because the men are all machochismos (twats to you and me) but seeing as we were bringing them dynamite and sweet drinks they dont seem to mind gringas.

so off we went all tacked up in wellies overals and real live miners hat with torch into the mines, the tour was not as bad as i thought it was going to be, a bit hard to breath at times and a little scary when some dynamite went off inside the mine but appart from that the 2 hours in the mine was ok, now just to make it clear we didnt even lift a finger and if made to do anything other than wipe dirt off our faces the lack of oxygen and dangerous chemicals in the air really got to us. at one point i was leaning quite happily against a wall when our guide called back to not to that its arsnic and i probably shouldnt lick my fingers either, not that that was going through my mind.

keith loved every moment from sliding down mineshafts and scurrying through tunnels and his favorite bit was when he got to make a bomb out of his dynamite and see it blow up, his only wish being he couldve actually blown something up but unfortunatly we had nothing good to hand.

if anyone is reading this and they are in bolivia i definatly would go to the mines just to see what these people do for the equivilent of 50 euro a month. oh and most of them are supporting families of 13 children or more and more than one wife.

off to see the demise of butch and sundance next , well after getting rid of this cough anyways.

love keith and kim

p.s its snowing!

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