A Brief, and Somewhat Depressing, Geography Lesson

Potosi Bolivia is where everyone goes to wander around deep in the bowels of the nearby mines. Everyone, that is, except me. Why didn't I go? Let me explain...

I had been reading about Potosi and the mines even before I got there. There are a lot of interesting stories surrounding the place. One claim is that the number of people who have died working in the mines is around 8 million. (Mostly indigenous and African slaves.) It was at one point the largest, wealthiest city in the Americas, if not the world. The dollar sign ($) we use today is taken from the Potosi silver stamp, which is a P on top of an S on top of an I. The wealth taken from the mines is what caused Europe to flourish and even ushered in the industrial revolution.

At least, those are some of the claims. To me, though, the relevant fact is that today the mines are still being worked in much the same way as they were 500 years ago. Basically, it's just guys pounding away at rocks with picks, shovels, and the occasional dynamite blast. Safety regulations? Ha! Labor laws? Double Ha! (It is not uncommon for boys as young as ten to work there to help support their family.)

If you want to see a very well done documentary movie about the subject, check out "The Devil's Miner", which follows the life of a 14 year old and his younger brother. Something interesting to note is that in this highly Catholic country, the miners actually do everything they can to please "Tio"/the Devil, since he is the one who controls the fate of the miners underground. Every mine has a little statue of the Tio and they give it gifts of coca leaves and liquor. Kind of weird, eh?

The Anthropologist in me finds all this really interesting. The humanitarian in me says it's also kind of messed up. So I thought about going, and may have even had a chance at a free tour. But in the end, despite the fact that many of the miners actually look forward to the tours (people are expected to bring down drinks, coca, etc.) I decided I would pass. A part of me regrets that, but it's not a large part.

Besides, I had other things on my mind like the fact that I was essentially broke. My stupid ATM card wasn't working and the better part of one morning was spent trying to find some semi-transparent scotch tape to place over the magnetic strip in a last-ditch effort to get the thing to read. You might be surprised at how hard it is to find such tape in Bolivia. I eventually did, but the card still didn't work. (Turns out, it was a Bolivian ATM thing. I didn't learn this until I got back to Peru, unfortunately.)

Thank goodness for Western Union. On the upside, I got to experience what it was like to walk into a bank, and nervously walk out with a large heap of money. I'm not the first guy to come from Wyoming and do that, but in the end I had better luck than the one I'm thinking of. 

The Problem with Superlatives

I, like most people, am interested in things that are the highest, longest, deepest, fastest, etc. Guinness, of beer fame, even has a book of such things. Luckily, on this trip I have gotten to see quite a few. In no particular order they are... 

Uyuni salt flats - the largest in the world.

Aticama desert - driest in the world. 

Potosi, Bolivia - highest city of over 100,000 in the world.

La Pas, Bolivia - highest capital city in the world. (Caveat here being that Sucre shares the capital. Still, they average out higher than any other.)

Machu Picchu - best preserved Incan ruins.

Bus to Machu Picchu - most expensive, per kilometer, in the world. (Probably)

Amazon - largest river. (Not the longest, but by volume... whoa.)

Condor - the largest flying bird in the Western Hemisphere.

Lake Titicaca - highest navigable lake in the world.

Cusquena Negro - worst beer in the world. (OK, that is just my opinion but, it is like a porter with corn syrup mixed in -ick.)

Colca Canyon - deepest canyon in the world.

Whoa, OK... record scratch here. What? Really? When I heard that, and that I was just a few hours drive away, I decided I had to see it. My guide book actually informed me that nearby Cotahuasi was even deeper. I guess I sort-of assumed the Grand Canyon had that title. There was only one problem - the wildcat miners in Peru were upset about the prospect of having to register, comply with environmental regulations, and pay taxes, so they blocked the Pan American highway, thereby preventing me from making the 10 hour journey to see Cotahuasi. So, I decided that the estimated extra 300 meters between it and Colca wasn't that important to me and I would visit Colca instead. Especially when I saw photos. Yes, Cotahuasi is, apparently, very deep. BUT, it is also very wide - there's a small city at the bottom of it for crying-out-loud. In my mind, that makes it less of a canyon, and more of a valley, but after a little reading I learned that this whole buisiness of "deepest" really seems to be a case of "It depends on what your definition of IS, is." In fact,  the infallible wikipedia hardly mentions either one.

In any event, the miners made sure I wasn't going anywhere, so I had time to check out Colca, anyhow.

It's a four hour drive over a pass of 16,000 feet to Cobanaconde, which is a dusty little village that people only visit because it is the hopping off point for a hike down into the canyon. You stop along the way to see the Cruz de Condor, which is where the birds congregate in the mornings. One flew directly overhead and I have to say... wow. I mean... Christ, they are HUGE. The one I saw had to have at least a wingspan of 8 feet or more. That alone almost made the $25 entry fee into the area worth it.

Once in the village itself, I made inquiries as to how to see both the hot springs and the Sangalle Oasis, at the bottom of the canyon. I had four different maps, and each was more worthless than the other. Asking around didn't help... I got estimates of everywhere from four hours to eight for the hike I was thinking about. (This may be the most frustrating part of traveling in this part of the world, and I was reminded of my experience in Central America. If you ask a question, you will  almost certainly get an answer. And it will almost certainly be wrong. You must ask the same question at least a half-dozen times to get a good sample, then come up with an average. Only then can you start to hope that you have the right answer. And you will still probably be wrong.) Thunder clouds were building on the horizon, and that decided my route for me - directly down to the Oasis.

I have to say, that it is impressive to see. But the worlds deepest... I just don't know. It took me about two hours to get down to the bottom on a steep, heavily switchbacked trail. The Grand Canyon, by comparison, takes about 4-5 hrs. 

The little tiki-hut lodges at the bottom are perfectly lovley. Swimming pools, bars, food - nothing fancy, but more than adequate. (My thatch-roofed room cost about $5 that night.) The hike out the next day was hot, but it still only took me 3 hrs. (I stopped a lot along the way, too.)

Now, I don't want to spread conspiracy theories, but has anyone checked the IP address of the sites proclaiming these canyons to be the deepest? Because I would not be surprised to learn that they are originating in Peru. You see, Peru figured out long ago with Machu Picchu that there is money in tourism. In fact, the estimate for 2013 was $3.8 billion. Not Neuvo Soles, either - dollars. In all the cities even remotely close to something of interest you will find about 10,000 offices hawking guided treks, paragliding, tours, dune buggy rides, horseback rides, boat tours, or almost any combination thereof. (And they will almost never include the park/ site feet. Be warned.) So, in the end, having a lot of things in your country that you can claim are the something-est is certainly in your own self interest, even if there may be a caveat or two attached to them. 

I dont mean to sound bitter. I get it, and I guess I dont blame the Peruvians for doing it. Just today, though, I have been told how pefect in nutrition Cuy (guinea pig) meat is. I bought overly spendy Sachi Inchi nuts, which are supposed to do everything from help digestion to improve memory. (Also,they are the blandest nut imaginable.) 

Anyway... come to Peru. Enjoy all of the incredible natural and man-made wonders that it has to offer, because they are many. But take them with a grain of salt.  (There are plenty in Bolivia - remember the salt flats are the largest in the world.)

Who ARE those guys?

Judging by the looks that we got, I´m pretty sure that´s what the residents of San Vicente were thinking when they saw us wandering around their remote mining town in southern Bolivia... but I get ahead of myself.

Like so many places, my first introduction to a place called Bolivia was through the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. For those of you who don´t know it, the movie has a strong Wyoming connection as most of the bandit´s most famous robberies took place there. Butch went to prison in Laramie and their nickname "The Hole-in-the-Wall-Gang" comes from a hideout about 1 1/2 hrs. south of where I live in Sheridan. Even Sundance's nickname comes from a town in the northeast part of the state.

Long story short, things did not end well for them. They fled the US, tried ranching in Argentina, then started robbing banks and payrolls in Chile and Bolivia. After their last payroll heist, they decided to stay the night in San Vicente, where they were given an adobe outbuilding to stay in (no hotels), a dinner of sardines and beer, and then were ratted out to the lawman posse who had arrived just before them.  Different theories exist as to how they actually met their end, including suicide. The version shown in the movie actually follows (on a smaller scale) an account given, secondhand, by Hiram Bingham. Remember him? (He´s the guy who found Machu Picchu a few years later, but was in Bolivia at the time and may have even met them.) In any event, they are buried there, and the cemetery still exists.

Which is why, of course, I had to go check it out.

I started out in San Pedro, Chile, which is where the duo may have been heading for before bunking down in San Vicente. San Pedro is kind of what I imagine Santa Fe looked like, oh, 150 years ago. (Plus the modern trinket shops, and banners for guided tours hanging out of every shop, no matter what they normally sell.)  It was there I bought a ticket to see the Uyuni salt flats. You may know this place if you´ve ever seen photos of people walking around on what looks like a mirror image of the sky. The illusion comes from the largest salt flat in the world, which in places is covered with a couple inches of water - hence the reflection. On the way there we  passed many beautiful things including high altitude lakes in hues of red, and green, and white. There were flamingos, weird rock formations, geysers and hot springs. It took three days of travel in an old Toyota Four-Runner on rough gravel roads. 

On this same excursion was Dave - a tall, handsome, bright-eyed guy from England who, as it turns out, was a fan of the movie and also wanted to try and visit San Vicente.  I say try to, because it´s not as easy to get to as one might think. In the town of Uyuni (Where I discovered that I couldn´t withdraw any money from the ATMs and was essentially broke - it was starting to look like I might have to start a life of crime myself.) every other shop offers tours of the salt flats just like in San Pedro, but no one knew much about San Vicente. And no one seemed willing to take us for less than about $200. We heard that it was possible that tours ran from Tupiza in the south, but they were twice as expensive.

So, what to do? Well - start hitchhiking, of course. We got up the following day from our hostel, that I swear was a former prison (you´ll believe me when you see the photos) and walked to the edge of town. It didn´t take long before we were picked up by a young couple on their way to Atocha, near the junction of a road that goes to San Vicente. There they dropped us, and we waited in the shade of an old, abandoned, adobe hut. And we waited, and waited. A half dozen tourist-filled Four-Runners passed us on their way to Tupiza. An old guy walked from a village about a mile away to check some llamas. Another guy came by on a bike. There were a couple motorcyclists. No one, it seemed, was going to San Vicente. About four hours in I was starting to get nervous. We still had about three hours of daylight, but San Vicente was still well over an hour away, or more, depending on who you talked to.

Finally, a white Four-Runner stopped with an older, traditionally dressed lady and her son in the back seat.  The 30-something old driver said he was going to San Vicente, but there was no place to stay. I told him my guide book said there was. With a shrug, he let us hop in with them. We were on our way.

The landscape would have been familiar to Butch - it looks a lot like Wyoming. (Later, on our way back down into Tupiza, I was amazed at how much it looked like his home state of Utah - Bolivia even has a version of Bryce Canyon called La Sillar.)

We climbed higher, and higher, on the gravel road passing only two very isolated adobe and thatch homesteads. The skies started to get dark with an impending storm. After almost two hours of driving, during which we learned from the driver that San Vicente was not, a my old guidebook said, a village of 100 people, but a bustling silver mine with more than 600 full time employees and their families, we saw the place. It sits in a small valley at 14, 764 ft. with the old village segregated away from the new town with only a rec. center in between. (Which has a very nice, green AstroTurf soccer field, I might add.)

We passed through a security gate to get into town. Everyone in or out is noted, and apparently not everyone gets through. Tourists are given an exception, apparently.

The new town itself is really more of a man camp. There is only one small convenience store, and that's about it.  A young guy checked on company housing for us (I think) but came back empty handed - apparently our driver was right. Things were looking a little grim.  I bought a lighter in case we needed to find our own adobe hut and make a fire to stay warm. After, I decided to check on the place listed in my guide book (El Rancho) anyway. Today, it´s nothing more than a kitchen that feeds  some of the hungry miners each night. Luckily the owner, Nancy, who is a somewhat rotund lady with a big smile and years far beyond her actual age of 40 (she´s a grandmother), said she would let us sleep in the back room of her kitchen. (Sounding familiar?)

We left our stuff and went to the museum, for which we needed to acquire the key from the convenience store. The young guy who unlocked the place for us took the dusty blankets off the half-dozen displays and took some photos with his cell phone. The displays consisted of a bunch of old mining paraphernalia, some old guns, movie posters, and a guest register which hadn´t been signed since 2012, and then only by a few people.)

After that, we walked to the cemetery, which was locked, so we moved onto the old village. I assumed that Butch had died here, somewhere, but apparently the original spot the shootout took place in has been demolished and replaced with a company building. Unbelievable. There is NOTHING but space for at least 100 miles in every direction, and yet... uhg.

But that is the way of it in San Vicente these days. There used to be a sign welcoming visitors with a "The Gangsters Butch Cassidy Sundance Kid here Died" [sic] but we didn´t see anything of the sort. Slightly disheartened, we wandered back to the main town in the near-dark. I had the foresight to buy sardines, but no beer, so we stopped in at a couple of the living-room stores that local women have set up as competition with the C-store, where I found some Tri-Malta. (Later I realized it was not only non-alchoholic but disgustingly sweet.) Luckily, we were saved from this meal by Nancy, who welcomed us with potato stew, llama steak, and rice, which was not only good but only cost us about $2. We spent the evening playing with balloons with her grand-kids and watching Discovery Channel-type shows which are exactly the same as the US, but in Spanish. (Not dubbed, just re-done. There are all there - mechanics, naturalists, rednecks with beards. It´s weird.) At the end of the evening, she gave us blankets and wished us a good night.

The next morning, we got up and went back to the cemetery. Rather than try to find who had the key to the front gate, we hopped over the adobe wall surrounding it. (We weren´t the first. There was even a step provided for the purpose.) From there, it was more like that scene in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, where Tucco is trying to find the right grave. It´s a small cemetery, but completely unorganized and hard to navigate. It wasn´t looking promising (Maybe the marker was now gone, too?!) but finally, there it was - the grave marker for Butch Cassidy. We spent an appropriate amount of time in silence, and taking photos, then hopped back over the wall.

We said goodbye to Nancy, gave her some money for her trouble, and crammed into a old rusty red Four-Runner - four of us in the far back; four more, plus a kid, in the middle; and two nursing women with the driver up front. It was a tortuous four hours down the mountain into Tupiza, but I comforted myself with the notion that, unlike Butch, I would be returning to Wyoming and would set eyes on Hole-in-the-Wall again.

Till next time...

Hiram in Peru with My Life in Ruins

Get it? Nevermind, you will.

So this blog about Peru and Chile is going to be brief, I´m afraid. Why? Well, nothing particularly exciting or weird happened. We enjoyed Peru, and if you would wonder why, just google The Plaza de Armas in Cusco. It must be one the most picturesque central squares anywhere. It has gorgeous old cathedrals (Which I refused to pay in order to visit, so I have no photos of the insides of these. Whatever - that's what google is for.) and ornately carved wooden balconies on buildings that flank the entire square, which itself is filled with flower gardens and a fountain.

Then, of course, there´s Machu Pichhu. You know it - most everyone knows it. It´s one of the seven "modern" wonders of the world, after all. I remember as a teen reading about Hiram Bingham and his discovery of the place (though there was actually a family living there) - it's part of what initially made me interested in archaeology.  Over 100 years later, it´s still not easy (or cheap) to get to. The only way to even get close to it is by train. There are no roads. (This could be by design, of course. The train charges about $50 to $80 one-way. Locals ride their own separate train, which I don't believe tourists are allowed onto anymore. Of course, we got a snack and tea on our train.)

There is a town, of sorts, at the end of the line called Aguas Calientes, and so named for the hot springs located there. Ah, Aguas. As you get off the train there is what feels like an entire city block covered with awnings which house hundreds of vendors selling millions of trinkets related to the ancient Incas. (I've never understood how these places make any money. They all sell the same, identical, crap. I know for a fact a lot of it isn't even made in Peru. I saw the same stone pyramids for sale that I saw in Egypt, wooly caps that I saw in Nepal, and bejeweled bronze camels in Morocco. I suspect it all comes from China.) Not much else to say about Aguas.

Anyway, back to the Wonder. Truth be told your first impression is, actually, a bit anticlimactic. You see some storage buildings at first, but it takes a bit more climbing before you get to the photo spot which is what everyone instantly recognizes as Machu Picchu. It's glorious, but perhaps a little too familiar to be completely breathtaking. 

One thing that did surprise me was the site of Sacsayhuayman. (Sounds like "Sexy woman" - at least that's what you are told.) That the Incas carved blocks of rock that size to fit that perfectly is mind blowing. Photos soon. Or google it.

There´s plenty of other cool sites I could talk about, too, but if you really are interested in the archaeology of Peru, you don´t need me, just... well, you know.