To the extremes of the earth...

Leaving the warmth and greenery of eastern Bolivia, my trail to Chile led back to the extremes of Bolivian altitude and the mining city of Potosi, breathlessly sitting at 4,060 metres, surrounded by a dry, barren landscape dotted with bare mountains rich in minerals... the city of Potosi was historically the main centre for silver mining in Bolivia, its earth producing tonnes of the precious metal for European markets under the Spanish colonisation and consuming many millions of human lives with its arduous extraction.

The mines of Potosi are still producing hundreds of years later, albeit at a much slower rate, with 15,000 Bolivian workers entering deep underground six days a week in the search for tin, iron, silver and zinc in conditions not much improved since the 1500s. The city of Potosi exists solely for the mining industry, but its historic importance was beautifully apparent with narrow cobbled streets, Spanish tiled architecture and imposing stone churches, unfortunately much of which is now solely a facade, the city seems to be crumbling from within. The first morning I awoke in my freezing cold concrete hostel room and peeped out of the window to see sheets of snow falling from the sky and gently blanketing the courtyard... the sight was beautiful, but in a city with no heating or insulation and precarious amounts of hot water it made for painfully numb feet and I rushed out to buy a big alpaca scarf for extra warmth! Heading underground to experience the town's major mine, Cerro Rico, seemed a better idea than staying in the cold city, but as we equipped ourselves in protective clothing, boots, helmets and lamps with scarves wrapped over our mouth and nose, I began to feel pangs of fear at the conditions we were to be entering.

The entrance to the mine is a squared tunnel in the side of a mountain, stretching as far as you can see into blackness with puddles of muddy water on the ground, evoking a very medieval feeling as we hunched over and headed into the enveloping blackness... the mines are now operated by "co-operatives" which sound very equitable, but in reality the co-operative members are very few and most of the miners work as "assistants" with no legal protection, or social security, in conditions that are truly horrific. The mines are full of extremely dangerous substances, the roof of the hollowed out tunnels coated with white crystallised arsenic and cyanide and the miners wear no protective clothing or masks - the average life span of a miner is a horrifyingly short 40 years: the main cause of death? Respiratory disease caused from the toxic substances they are breathing into the delicate tissue of their lungs for eight hours every day.

Children are also working in these mines, some as young as 10 years old, they are paid 25 Bolivianos for an eight hour day (about $4) working six day weeks with no access to fresh air or sunlight. The psychological impact of this underground life must be immense; as we descended further into the mine through tiny tunnels the psychological effects greeted me; the lack of oxygen, the dust, the darkness and the tiny spaces bring an immense claustrophobia and I began to panic, feeling that I couldn't get enough oxygen into my lungs. "Calm down, breathe slowly and deeply" I told myself, trying not to let the panic overcome my logic, the fumes from the mining chemicals rising upwards toward us and the process of breathing through the cloth over my nose and mouth became even more difficult. How can these people work in these conditions, all day, every day of their artificially short lives?

The adult miners are paid 350 Bolivianos per week, apparently a very good salary for Bolivia, and above the national average. Combined with a lack of alternatives, the miners are forced to accept horrific conditions and an early death for immediate financial assistance for their families. The mine has no expert geologists or technicians, the tunnels are created by using dynamite and the same method is used in the search for mineral veins in the rock - no maps for the mine exist, and the miners use their experience to judge where is safe to create a new tunnel. Obviously this is extraordinarily dangerous and cave-ins are not uncommon; we had to sign a disclaimer before entering acknowledging our knowledge of this, and acknowledging that in the case of a cave-in we would be in as much danger as the miners... (this knowledge was not comforting as we crawled through tiny dark tunnels struggling with the heat, dust and fumes). Nearly 30 metres inside the mine my claustrophobic limit was at capacity and the panic rose in my chest as I thought of how far from the surface I was and how my lungs were struggling for oxygen. In a tunnel about 30cm high I turned to our assistant and said "por favor, quiero salir!!" - I was guided out, stumbling urgently toward the entrance in the immediacy of my brain's struggle for open spaces and air. I was not alone, nearly half our group met their mental capacity and had to be brought out and as we sat back in our bus, shaking with cold and watching the snow, I felt dumbstruck at the conditions of this place, akin to hell for me, and the knowledge that thousands of people, and children, every day enter these conditions to work for what would barely buy two cups of coffee at a tourist restaurant.

The minerals collected from the mines are transported to "refining" stations on the outskirts of the city where, through a process using numerous heavy chemicals, the minerals are separated from rock in ancient machines, rivers of waste chemicals running below in a strange orange tinted fluid, which are then dumped into the local river dubbed "Rio Negro" (black river) which then flows into larger rivers in Bolivia, and onto Brazil and Argentina. Environmental protection laws, and the enforcement of these laws, simply lack in Bolivia to prevent this abhorrent practice which will cause massive environmental contamination for hundreds of years to come. The perpetrators of these heinous environmental crimes? International companies like Rio Tinto who practice much higher standards of protection in other countries whose legislation controls their behaviour. Contemplating this makes me realise with even more clarity the necessity for international environmental legislation relating to the extraction of natural resources and the associated chemical use as this clearly shows how the impacts of contamination are an international issue and the companies involved in resource extraction simply will not regulate themselves if it will increase their profit line.

I was glad to leave the cold of Potosi, and the disturbing experience of the mines and left in high spirits bouncing over a rough dirt road for the seven hour journey to Uyuni, a tiny railway town that sits on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, the great salt flats of Bolivia. The salt flats stretch a blindingly white 12,000 sq km distance, the salt lying seven metres deep in this millenia old lake high in the mountains linking Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. Uyuni is a dry, cold and barren town, the temperatures plummeting below 0 every night, leaving us with water pipes frozen shut in the morning and hovering over the gas stove in the hostel kitchen as our only source of warmth making bowls of porridge and cups of hot coca tea. We left Uyuni with a guide and 4WD to take us over the salt flats and through the desert to Chile, a three day journey through extreme climes and extreme landscapes - beautiful, but inhospitable, and very tough on the body as the mercury soared to 30 degrees in the day time and plunged to -20 at night with howling winds that have shape the desert rock into strange formations. We passed lagoons of beautiful colours and flocks of pink flamingos, framed with huge Dali-esqe mountains whose shadows make dark and warped patterns across the yellow sand. After three days in this environment reaching Chile felt wonderful and shortly past the border the broken, bumpy dirt path turned into a beautiful smooth tarseiled road winding its way 2,500 metres down into the Northern-Chilean desert and to hot showers, real coffee, muesli and yoghurt! I am now headed south towards Chile's famous lakes, forests, wild Pacific seas and the home of those most wonderful Chilean thinkers, Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende...

Goodbye Bolivia, I won't forget your shocking contrasts, your wild diversity or your heartbreaking disparities.