Redhed's Rambles: Bolivia

I arrived at the Bolivian border yesterday around 5:00 pm. The crossing was rather painless, and there weren not any lineups. I met the female side of the British couple that had rim problems in Honduras (who doesn't?) and who ended up relingquishing their bunk on the Starhlrate, which meant that I was able to make the trip. They were having Argentinian insurance issues. She had been waiting for six hours for her boyfriend, who was back in Bolivia with an insurance dealer. I was not about to shop around for Bolivian insurance for my bike at a border crossing, so I found a room just before a huge thunderstorm opened up the skies. I guess I will get to know what Bolivian mud looks like....

On my last day in Argentina, I had somehow lost the alternate route that I had envisioned, and I was travelling north on a major ruta. I came across this fellow, and I just had to stop and take some pictures and ask him what his story was. It turns out that he is carrying the original flag of Argentina, and he was heading for Salta. He was geared up in his traditional guacho riding gear, and was very determined to get to his destination. I wished him well, and we set off on our steeds...

Further down the road, I ran into more fellows with the same goal in mind. Clearly this was a political event of some kind. Their gear and their horses evoked visions of open pampas and huge herds of cattle...

Their chaps are designed to go through the thorniest bushes imaginable. I wonder what protects the horses?

And then, the lights came on, and I realized that February 13th is a very important day for Argentinians. Hundreds of riders and supporters were gathering to celebrate the birth of their flag..

Close up of the chaps:

Youngsters are involved...

Here the Argentinian flag was born on February 13, 1813...

It was a very special experience, and I was fortunate to meet these riders. I was moved that these people would gather to celebrate their flag, almost 50 kilometers from the nearest villa. As in all countries of the world, there are some folks who believe that a country's history is vitally important to the success and growth of a nation. While some folks tend to ignore patriotic behaviour, or dismiss it, I think that it is through this kind of education that the younger generations can learn to value those aspects of a culture which make a country and a nation unique and important.

The week of Argentinian flatlands and huge agricultural tracts came to an abrupt end. The mountains of northern Argentina and Bolivia rose quickly out of the northern plains..

You cut corn at the base of the stalk, and therefore Capricorn is in the southern hemisphere...Social Studies 4...

The layers of the Earth have been tossed and turned. The geology of this region is very interesting...

The end of the road for Argentina. It seems like yesterday I was in Ushuai...

A marching band greeted Blondy on her entry into Bolivia....

Simon Bolivar was there with his sword, too...

The current President is very popular with the indigineous people...supposedly he has a strong socialist bent....

A thunderstorm opened up the skies....

The following day, an early start and about 300 kilometers of riding brought me to this monolith.

This is the north side of the mountain which has been continuously mined since the 1500's..

The North side, facing Potosi..

Cerro de Potosi is a mountain of silver, first discovered by the Spaniards...1544...

The Mountain dominates the landscape and it has driven the economy of this city and certainly parts of the country for five centuries..

In the pre-Hispanic period, Potosí was only a small hamlet perched at an altitude of 4,000 m, in the icy solitude of the Andes. It owes its prosperity to the discovery, between 1542 and 1545, of the New World's biggest silver lodes in the Cerro de Potosí, the mountain south of the city which overlooks it. As a result, Potosí is directly and tangibly associated with an event of outstanding universal significance: the economic change brought about in the 16th century by the flood of Spanish currency resulting from the massive import of precious metals from the New World into Seville.

The 'Imperial City' of Potosí, which it became following the visit of Francisco de Toledo in 1572, exerted lasting influence on the development of architecture and monumental arts in the central region of the Andes by spreading the forms of a Baroque style incorporating Indian influence. Growth was extremely rapid: in the new town, where building began under the terms of the Law of the Indies in 1572, there were by the 17th century 160,000 colonists, as well as 13,500 Indians who were forced to labour in the mines. Following a period of disorganized exploitation of the native silver lodes, the Cerro de Potosí reached full production capacity after 1580, when a Peruvian-developed mining technique, known as patio, was implemented. In the 16th century, this area was regarded as the world's largest industrial complex in which the extraction of silver ore relied on a series of hydraulic mills.

Potosí is the one example par excellence of a major silver mine in modern times. The city and the region conserve spectacular traces of this activity: the industrial infrastructure comprised 22 lagunas or reservoirs, from which a forced flow of water produce the hydraulic power to activate the 140 ingenios or mills to grind silver ore. The ground ore was then amalgamated with mercury in refractory earthen kilns called huayras or guayras. It was then moulded into bars and stamped with the mark of the Royal Mint. From the mine to the Royal Mint, the whole production chain is conserved, along with dams, aqueducts, milling centres and kilns. Production continued until the 18th century, slowing down only after the country's independence in 1825.

The site consists of the industrial monuments of the Cerro Rico, where water is provided by an intricate system of aqueducts and artificial lakes; the colonial town with the Casa de la Moneda; the Church of San Lorenzo; several patrician houses; and the barrios mitayos, the areas where the workers lived.

The Casa de la Moneda (House of the Mint), in the centre of the city close to Republic Square, was constructed between 1753 and 1773. The house today is a numismatic museum. It possesses more than 100 colonial pictures and various archaeological and ethnographic collections. The church of San Francisco was the first church built during the colonial period; it houses the patron of Potosí, El Senor de la Vera Cruz. The church of San Lorenzo was built in 1548; it is an outstanding example of dressed stone in the local Baroque style.

What this article doesnt mention is the number of people killed in the name of the silver ingots, as well as the current mining practices, which appear to be just as bad:

After 1800, the silver mines were depleted, making tin the main product. This eventually led to a slow economic decline. Nevertheless, the mountain continues to be mined for silver to this day. Due to poor worker conditions (lack of protective equipment from the constant inhalation of dust), the miners still have a short life expectancy with most of them contracting silicosis and dying around 40 years of age.