The Devils

Around a long sweeping curve on a decaying highway appears a massive geological basin full of twinkling nights. This is La Paz, a city that spills down the surrounding hills as if crumbling into some unseen drain in the center, as if it is about to suck you in. And it does. At 3600 metres altitude, I climbed down from the bus, short of breath and aware of some kind of pulse beating in the street beneath my feet.

The first night was spent in the Wild Rover, some notorious gringo party hole without a Bolivian in sight. The beds are clean and comfortable but the place is fuelled by cocaine, cheap booze and scared foreigners. I gotta get out of this place, but for now it's the only bed in town. “Oy mate! You surf?” Seriously? Do you start all conversations that way? Hell no I don't surf. Nobody does: we are thousands of k from the nearest ocean in a landlocked country. “Dude don't talk to me, I hate gringos.”

A couple of beers in the bar were in order but I was soon shocked and appalled to discover the gringo bartender didn't understand what “ocho” meant. “Six?” Like seriously, I gotta get out of here.

The next day I wheeled a few blocks across town, hungover as sin and carrying my friend's backpack too, an act of goodwill induced by a knee injury. The thin air was no help and fortunately the Hotel Austria was only ten blocks away uphill.

The city is madness, traffic everywhere, likely the most perilous feature of a purportedly 'dangerous' place, but at least they've got these weird crossing guards to dance in zebra costumes and everybody seems to like that. The plazas are certainly not the grandest in South America, but the depth of the culture gives the city a richness that I didn't feel in the other capitals. The faces are mostly indigenous, and the ladies have long braids and cute miniature bowler hats that they pin to their beautiful long black hair. Usually they have a big load of saleable goods, or maybe a small child bundled into a colourful blanket that they sling around the shoulder like a backpack.

There is a buzz in the market, and in particular, the mercado de brujas (witch's market) is full of herbs, potions and mummified llama fetuses. These are apparently good for any purpose, including good luck, make money, bring back lost lover, though nobody could supply me with a decent recipe for a stew, so I decided not to purchase. After all they are surely widely available should I change my mind.

The city had sucked me in indeed and after the better part of a week, I decided that the time had come to make a move. The first stop was Potosi, a small town way up in the mountains and allegedly the highest town in the world (4400 metres). The vestiges of decadence remain there to this day, though the modern population rates as one of the most impoverished in the country. The city was constructed on account of a silver and tin mine nearby. The digging began in the 18th century and soon the cathedrals and plazas started to spring up. Slaves were imported but many of the africans died because they were not able to handle the intensely physical labour at such a high altitude. This left the mine work to the indigenous, many of whom still work there today. The wealthy creoles have long since made their cash and moved on.

I decided to head into the depths of the mine, just another crouched body amidst the ten layers of tunnels 4900 metres above some distant sea. A few steps in and I am surrounded by total darkness. I follow my guide toward some rhythmic clink at the end of a dark tunnel. I arrive to see rocks smash as a man attacks them with a pick. He seems to get older with every movement, wasting away and working incredibly hard. He is looking for a vein which would allow him to hire a crew and extract the silver or tin that it contains. No luck yet. He likely earns about 500 Bolivianos ($72 CDN, $71 USD) per week and there are no guarantees for that. He works six days a week for at least ten hours and sustains himself chewing coca and smoking enormous hand rolled cigarettes. I give him a bag of coca and he is delighted with the small gift. He takes a break and has a smoke before munching some leaves as I head back out through the tunnel.

We push deeper into the mine and now I am truly inside the mountain. I feel as if I was in the bowels of the earth as we wind our way through tunnels and finally to a deep shaft with a knotted rope dangling down it. I grab the rope and climb down twenty metres or so to find another tunnel where a man is hauling 20kg bags of rubble up from another pit even deeper and darker. There is an enormous pile of rubble that has come bit bit by bit from bags attached to the end of a rope. He offers the rope up to me, and I try my hand at his task, only to encounter incredible difficulty on account of both weight and altitude. I heave and suck for air and manage to extract a bag as the miner grins. He pulls up hundreds a day.

When I caught my breath we headed down another tunnel to visit the devil who lives in a little shrine in some dark cavern deep in the mountain. There is a hideous statue of the beast, complete with horns and fallus, and he goes by “Tio Georgie” (Uncle Georgie) for reasons I have forgotten. My guide sparks up a massive cig and stuffs it in his grinning mouth. If he finishes it will be good luck. We sit and observe the inanimate demon as it smokes away, and the guide cracks out a milk jug containing some strong spirit (96% alcohol). He dumps some on the beast and we shoot a capful each. It is horrible shit, though I can't believe what I have seen. Finally “Tio Georgie” has finished his smoke and it is time to move on.

We make our way back toward the exit, dodging hand pushed rail carts full of rubble, and I pass out a few bags of coca, along with some smokes and dynamite. After two and a half hours in the bowels of the mountain, the daylight at the end of the shaft appeared as quite some relief. Soon I was back in the burning sunlight, but that was not the end of the experience.

We headed up a hill where the guide handed me some dynamite to ball up. He put it in a bag and jammed in the wick, sparked it up and handed it back to me. He insisted on taking a couple of photos, then reclaimed the sizzling bomb and walked out a bit further onto the plateau. He took his time, cleared some rocks out of the way, did a few push ups, sparked a smoke, strolled back grinning and then we waited. The bad-ass explosion shook the air all around as if the end of the world was upon us. The mine visit was over and I took the bus back to town, leaving the dust, muck, and low life expectancy behind me.

I have profound respect for the people who have mined this mountain over the last 250 years. They have decided to work incredibly hard in dangerous conditions in hopes of supporting families and making a life for themselves. It is certainly easier to go beg on the streets of La Paz. The youngest kid in there right now is 12, and the oldest guy is 62. Most don't make it that long.

Back in the main square of Potosi, I sat and watched the people go about their business on that little town on top of the world. Sleep deprived and tired from a lack of oxygen, I headed to the bus station for another overnight haul, expertly timed to rock up at Uyuni around 2:00 am. I got my plan slightly sidetracked by some sleazy brazilian guy, and eventually slept in some shithole with a booming nightclub next door. I had not come to Uyuni for anything like that. I had come for the Salar de Uyuni, a salt flat that extends to the horizon in every direction.

After a brief stop the next morning at some boneyard full of ancient steam locomotives I was hurtling over the salt in an old Toyota 4x4. There is a cheezy museum in the middle with animals carved from salt, but the overall impression is the scope of the plain. We headed to the middle where there is a hill, which feels more like an island in a still sea, and I climbed up to find endless views where the white faded into the blue of the sky and distant mountains seemed to float in between. The light's refraction off the salt gives an incredible effect and it is almost hard to imagine that this was in fact once a high altitude inland sea.

In light of the infinite, flat, high altitude vista, that allows one to see for a hundred kilometers in any direction, some may be surprised to discover that there are a high number of traffic fatalities, including at least nine tourists in recent years. It seems that the drivers get drunk and somehow manage to crash vehicles from time to time and against all odds on the flat straight road. Drunk drivers don't seem to face any consequence from either their employers or the police who inspect vehicles heading onto the the salt flat. I suspect that they keep their jobs because they are part of some tight knit travel agency carrtel. Nobody wants to fire their drunk brother in law because whatever will become of god ol' sis and the kids. The result: catastrophic car crashes seem destined to persist unabated.

Back in Uyuni the day drew to a close and I got on another night bus to head back to La Paz where my friends were waiting for me. I could hardly sleep on the bus and began to feel the effects of high altitude burn out. I rolled back into the Hotel Austria with a fever and slept for the next couple of days.
Soon enough I felt better and ready for a last round of trouble in that crazy city.

It came soon enough. In Spanish, the “last night” is el “ultimo noche.” Seeing as it was the last night in La Paz for myself and two friends, we decided to make it a good one and went out seeking the ultimate.

We got warmed up at the Wild Rover where we won a pub trivia contest operating under the team name “Stinky Pinky and the Cocaine Nails.” That went sour when a guy tried to mooch our high alcohol prize. I told him to beat it prompting some saucy little coked out Aussie interloper to come over and berate me with threats as I attempted to complete the final question sheet. I did not acknowledge him at first but when he tried to grab the paper from my hand, I sternly informed him that he was about to be “rearranged.” He backed off a bit and after receiving my friend's unsolicited explanation of what I may have meant, he decided to move elsewhere.

It spoiled the mood and the joint was crawling with lame gringos anyway, so we headed back out into Bolivia without claiming our prize, and made our way to the Hard Rock. This is in no way affiliated with the chain. It is just a crazy disco full of Bolivians where the drinks come cheap. We were accompanied by the mooch, as he had ignored explicit requests to the contrary. The guy couldn't take a hint, and was soon attracting dirty looks from the Bolivians, likely due in part to my candour with the goons at the bar as I related his negative opinion of their appearance. At two o'clock the hostel bars closed, so the gringo crowd rolled out of prearranged taxis and into the bar. It was time for us to book again. The mooch tried to jump in the cab with us, but was left to his own devices amongst the drunk Bolivians on the sidewalk.

We ended up at a super dodgy place with no gringos, but soon had befriended a gangster guy and were happily patronizing the establishment. There was an overzealous “salud” (cheers) which smashed a glass and soaked the gangster in beer, but luckily he found this amusing and we continued the fiesta, breaking the remenants of the glass under the table to conceal the evidence. I began to admire the gangster's busted up nose and told him in Castellano that it appears he gets in lots of fights, but always wins (parece como tu luche mucho, pero gagne siempre).. He was delighted to hear that and more “saludes” were in order.

The place was growing stale so we moved to a food court for some barbequed beef heart, and then on to an after-hours bar. That was a strange place and I somehow befriended a guy who soon after took out an entire table of drinks when he crashed through it. I helped him up and he staggered out into the street. I figured that was as good a time as any jump a taxi home.

Que ultimo noche! Adios La Paz!