Potosi

Potosi 2nd Feb
Today I went on a tour of the mines in Potosi.
These mines are the reason for Potosis existance and over the centuries millions have died working as slaves in them. They also allowed Potosi grow to be at one stage the bigest city in south america.
Today most of the silver has run out and they are mined as a co-operative. This means that every man is working for himself or in small teams. Since none of them can afford machinary the mining is done with hand tools and dinamite.
They also push out the one tone carts of ore by hand, tiring.
In the main tunnel there is compressed air pumped in but in the small tunnels it can be harder to breath than it normally is at over 4060 meters.

3rd Feb
I went to the mint museum today. This is where coins were minted for the spanish empire from colonial times. The mint was still in use up to the 1950s. They still had the original machines used to press the silver into sheets. There was also lots of interesting art to view there.