Woke up and had a yummy breakfast of toast and strawberry juice, plus some cheese roll that wasn’t as good as it looked. Our guide picked us up around 9 and took us up to the mines. We climbed into an active mine which Mike describes as terrifyingly adventurous and archaic yet amazing. We climbed and crawled through not entirely stable areas, though our guide had complete confidence in our safety and only reminded us to watch our heads (hard hats on) or grab this rock to make sure we didn’t fall every 10 minutes or so. We carried coco leaves, alcohol and soda in to give to the miners as they passed use during our tour or while we watched them mining. The coco leaves help with altitude sickness and don’t taste as bad as they smell when someone else is chewing them. At one point, our guide sat us down and had us shut off our lights. It was pitch black in the heart of the mountain (which is now shorter than it used to be because of mining and cave-ins). He said that if your light goes out in the mine, you sit where you are because you can’t see and can’t tell up from down and are more likely to go deeper than out so you might as well wait for someone to find you…what an incredible life for about $10 per day in income.
We had a fabulous lunch and then napped a bit before our city tour. We saw the city mint, which is no longer in service and then our guide gave us a bit of a tour of the city. We both are of the opinion that he gave a much better tour of the mine (leading us down holes and tunnels) than the city which makes us wonder how long he was a miner before learning English and becoming a tour guide.
After our city tour we decided to check our email before finding dinner and got a bit of bad news over email. After crying it out, we drank a bottle of red wine with dinner–a really good Concho and Torro from Chile $12…you wouldn’t believe what a bottle of red wine does to you at this altitude.
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