Summary of the last few days

Lots of things have happened since the last post.

I decided to go on another mountain biking trip. I ended up meeting a guy who runs some pretty aggresive downhill mountian biking trips and decided to go to the nearby town of Sorata with him. It turned out there was a huge festival in Sorata (Fri, Sat, Sun) so it worked out great. We left La Paz on Saturday morning at 10 AM and drove 2 hours towards Sorata. The final leg of the trip to Sorata was a 4 hour downhill ride on a very narrow Inca trail. The others in the group were not paying tourists like myself...they were experienced downhill mountain bikers with all their own gear. I was definitly the novice of the group. Within the first 10 minutes I found myself at the bottom of a 6 foot sink hole because I was not able to orient myself correctly to pass a narrow 6 to 8 inch wide section of the rocky path. I think I had the guide worried for a moment that I wouldnt be able to keep up, but after that incident I kept up with them pretty well. Below you can see the narrow Inca trail that we were riding on.

Sorata Mountains
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At the end of the ride I was exhausted and sore. Travis, the guide, said it was time to take the bikes to the storage unit and I was happy that I had made it through the day without any injurys. Next thing I know he bombs down a huge flight of stairs. There were little kids all around me encouraging me to go as well. It was too late to chicken out but I knew that if I crashed and burned the kids would have a field day making fun of me. Luckily I made it down without incident.

The next day I relaxed in Sorata and enjoyed the festival. They had even converted their football stadium into a bull ring for their annual bull fight. It didnt really turn out to be a bull fight though....they didnt try to kill the bull, they were basically just teasing the bull for awhile.

Bullfight Spectators

After taking a bus back to La Paz I checked into Adventure Brew hostal. It turned out to be pretty nice, clean and had a free pancake breakfast in the morning. On top of all that, it has its own micro-brewery and every night that you stay there you get a free beer.

The next morning I wandered around La Paz with the intention of seeing two sites, the Coca Museo and the San Pedro Prison. The Coca Museo was intersting but small. It talked about the significance of the coca plant for the local people, the changes that occured when the Spanish arrived and a little about the production of cocaine.

After the Coca Museo I headed to San Pedro Prison to have a look. An English guy I met told me about a book called MARCHING POWDER (I think) that is set in San Pedro Prison and it sounded pretty crazy. I expected there to be some sort of tour or something but what I saw when I arrived was very surprising. As I walked along the sidewalk in front of the prison (which happens to be in the middle of a neighborhood) I looked to my right and there, 10 feet off of the sidewalk, was a large gate with hundreds of prisoners peering through the bars. Some guy form Holland starts yelling at me in English to help him because he has no food and no money. According to the kid who read the book, the prisoners inside have to buy their own food and can even buy their own property inside the prison. None of the prisoners had uniforms on, it looked like they all had their normal clothes on from they day they were thrown in there. I asked the guy what happened (still standing on the sidewalk in the middle of the neighborhood) and he told me he was in there for drugs. How long? I asked. 28 months.....WITH NO TRIAL, he yelled back. After a few more minutes talking with him and the guards he wanted me to come in and talk to him and I think the guards were going to allow it. However, the thought of going too close and being stuck in there for 28 months for no reason scared me a bit so I bailed back to the hostal.

Next, I decided to catch a night bus to Potosi to check out the silver mines. This would be my first night bus of the trip but I had a nice seat that reclined almost all the way into a bed so I didnt think it would be too bad. I actually slept pretty well, which turned out to be part of my problem. I had heard a few stories lately about backpacks being stolen from the bottom cargo hold of the bus so I decided to take my bag on board with me. I had my small bag under my feet and my bigger bag directly over my head. After reading for a bit I fell asleep like everyone else. When I woke up in the morning, my large bag that I had stashed over my head was gone. The bus had made a stop or 2 in the middle of the night and someone made off with my bag. All he (or she) really got out of the deal was a nice backpack filled with random half dirty clothes and a cheap sleeping bag. Now I´m travelling really light with just a small shoulder bag. I went to the market today and bought some sweatpants, 3 shirts, 3 pairs of underwear and 3 pairs of socks for about 30 USD. I think this setup should at least keep me warm until I make it down to Santiago.

Even though my bag just got ¨nicked¨ as the English say, I decided not to let it bring my trip to a standstill. After I filled out a police report (just for the hell of it) I headed out on a tour to check out the Silver mines. This turned out to be pretty intense. First we suit up in some miner gear and head to the miners market where we are supposed to buy presents for the miners. Did I mention this is an active mine that is being mined by hand by kids as young as 15 years old? Anyway, we bought them some coca leaves, some soda and some dynamite. Yeah, it was sick how easy it was for me to walk into a store and buy 2 sticks of dynamite (Nitroglycerin) and 2 small plastic bags of Ammonium Nitrate. After a brief tour of the silver processing plant we dove into the mine. It looked exactly like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Very narrow dark passageways with a narrow train track setup running down the middle and Bolivian miners running everywhere. Once we were in a narrow tunnel and heard a train of rocks barreling down the tracks....the guides yelled and we all had to run out of the tunnel to a wider area before we were crushed by the 3 small train cars full of stone. As we made our way deeper and deeper into the mine we stopped, talked to the miners and gave them presents. Apparently, some of the miners work a few 8 hour shifts a week followed by a 24 hour shift. Crazy. There were many differenty mining ¨groups¨as they were called (like cooperatives) and some were well off and some were not. The well off ones had electric motors to hoist the huges baskets of stone from the depths of the mine, small gas powered tractor things to pull the train cars of stone out of the mine, and pneumatic jackhammers. The groups with less money had do to all the labor by hand: hoisting, pushing carts, and hammering with a baby sledge hammer. Wow. It was tough to walk through the mine without thinking of the possibility of an earthquake ruining my day. After making it out of there, losing my backpack didnt seem like such a big deal.

Mine Entrance

Train used to transport rocks

I think this guy said he has been working in this mine for 25 years.

Mine access tunnel

Me in the mine hoping for no earthquakes

Me holding dynamite

Me in mine access tunnel

Oh yeah, we kept one of the sticks of dynamite and the guide showed us how to arm it and then we set it off outside the mine. Something tells me that this tour would not be allowed in the States (or most other countries for that matter)...perhaps a little too dangerous. I´m looking forward to a calm and hopefully safe next few days.

Tomorrow morning I´m headed to meet up with Scott again to tour the Salt Flats of south western Bolivia. After that I´ll head south through Argentina on land or fly directly to Santiago a day or 2 after Scott.

Send emails.......and don´t worry about the backpack, Ill live. I´m sure whoever stole it is in much worse shape than I am.

Andy