Tour of the Mines in Cerro Rico

(Walking through the miner’s section of town on our way to get outfitted with mining gear.)


(Miner’s market.)

(Visit to the mineral refineries called Ingenios. This particular machine is grinding up the rocks into pebbles.)


(Machines mixing rock paste with lovely chemicals like arsenic.)






(Silver sediment on my hand, after washing the soot that came out of the chemical baths with water.)


(View of Cerro Rico.)


(View of the Miner’s Barrio and below.)


(The Little Bus that Could.)


(Miner’s house.)

(More or less at the entrance of the mine, in the small but informative museum.)


(My guide Rolando sitting in one of the larger holes we crawled through.)






(The fuzziness of the picture is from all of the soot that was in the air.)

(Me and Rolando, hanging out in the mines…sigh.)


(Finally able to breath again, Rolando holding a dynamine bomb of Bolivian nitroglycerine, fertilizer, and diesel.)




(The dynamite bombs exploding on the hillside.)