Our second attempt to get diesel in Bolivia is a completely different experience. We arrive and are immediately called over by a very ‘motivated’ employee and told to get in front of the long queue. There is one other guy who can skip the queue and he arrives with a pick-up truck full of barrels. To fill them he produces a dozen or so ID cards. He acts a bit like a mobster (or maybe politician). All the truckers come to shake his hand. And he tells us that he is the one who did us ‘the favour of getting diesel here. We think the employee did us the favor. We pay a price to her somewhere between the local and tourist price and know she pocketing the margin. Whatever it was, we are able to buy another 400 km worth of diesel and are ready for the second part of Bolivia.

Our next stop is Potosi, a place nobody would know about if it wasn’t for the big mountain just behind the town. The mountain once contained the biggest silver deposit ever found. The Spanish called it Cerro Rico and for some time it was the only thing keeping the Spanish empire from going bankrupt. The spanish expression ‘vale un potosi’ (it’s worth a fortune) is a reference to this town and its mine. The people who worked the mine (Indigenous & African slaves and local miners to this day) never referred to it as Cerro Rico but as ‘the mountain that eats men’. It is estimated that up to 8 million people have died in (or as the result of) this mine.

We had heard much about the mine tours that can be done here but we did not hear a lot about the town itself. And we don’t understand why because this is a really beautiful colonial town, with plenty of beautiful buildings that are still witnesses of the booming times of the mine.

It’s a bit of a pity but it’s true that most people come here just to see the mines. We doubted quite a bit about doing such a tour. We read that it’s is not suited for kids because of the unhealthy environment and shocking conditions the miners (including children) work in.
We got some medical advice and learned that for short exposure, there are no real health risks. On the other hand, we don’t want to hide this harsh reality from our kids so we sign up for a tour the next day.

The tour starts with a visit to the miner’s market where all the equipment (yes, including dynamite!) is sold on the street. Next, we visit the refinery where the old machinery and inefficient processes make it very clear that mining here has very little to do with modern mining in other places in the world. Until a couple of decades ago, the mines were being exploited by the Bolivian government. When the government concluded that they were no longer profitable, they closed the facilities down. These days the mines are run by so called ‘cooperatives’. This is a rather misleading name as there is hardly any cooperation between miners. Almost all of them work for their own account within a ‘maffia like’ hierarchy. There is a ‘boss’ of each defined ‘mineral deposit’ and he ‘hires workers’, who after 3 to 5 years can hope to work on their own little piece of the mine (if the cooperative judges that they were ‘good’ workers)

The tour ends in a small part of the mine, high up the mountain. We already realized that this would not be a high tech mine from what we had seen before. But we never expected to see people work this mine just like 200 years ago: wheel barrows, shovels, and manual winches. There was one pneumatic drill for this whole ‘cooperative’…There are so little minerals left that it makes no sense to invest in modern equipment. These mines only keep going because of the ultra-cheap labour. The miners work 60-70 hours/week. If they are lucky enough to work on ‘rich’ mineral deposit, they may earn 200 dollars a month. If they work on a poor deposit, it will be a lot less.

Today the average miner in Potosi does not get older than 47 years old. Silicosis is killing most of them. We pay a visit to the ‘shrine’ of ‘El Tio’, the god of the underground. The powers of Jezus don’t work in the mine, so the miners worship El Tio for protection. But he’s quite fickle and needs to be pleased constantly with alcohol, coca leaves and llama blood.
The kids were quite nervous about going into the mine but were really impressed afterwards.
We were all glad to see the sunlight again. We were only inside for 40 minutes but it felt a lot longer. We all had a lot to think and talk about on the way to Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia.

The town feels very different from all other places we have visited in Bolivia: clean and polished and there was even diesel freely available without any queues. One thing that is not different from the rest of Bolivia, is that there seems to be some kind of parade going on every day. A highlight for us is the visit to the Dino park. This is not just a park with some scale models (like we’ve seen hundreds by the road all over Latin America). This park used to be a cement quarry. And while exploiting the quarry, thousands of tracks were discovered in a nearly vertical wall. Turns out that 75 million years ago, this was a flat area with a big lake where the dinosaurs came to drink. The footprints they left in the mud on the banks of the lake are still visible today.

As we noticed that for some reason, diesel is easily available all over town and there were no queues anywhere, we quickly fill up the tank on the way out. If our calculations are correct, we now only need to find about 50 more liter to make it across the border. We start to get confident that we will actually make it out of the country. We leave the high Andes behind and descend deep in the heart of Bolivia. The landscapes change all the time. At some point it even feels just like we are back in Utah in the USA. From one of our campsites we spot the endangered Paraba Frente Rojo macaws flying over us at sunset.

In Vallegrande, it’s time for another history lesson. In this area, Che Guevara was killed by the Bolivian army after a failed attempt to bring the revolution to South America. He also lay secretly buried here (under the local airport) for 30 years until the late 90’s. We visit a little annex building (the laundry room) of the local hospital. Here, the dead body of Che Guevara was shown to the internationale media after he had been executed by the Bolivian army.

After a successful revolution in Cuba and a failure in Congo, Che decided that Bolivia was the perfect place to start and spread the revolution all over South America. However, his revolution was smartly countered by the Bolivian dictator, who promptly promised the farmers the ownership of their lands. In this way, Che lost the support of a crucial player in his revolution and his efforts were all but doomed. After only 11 months Che was injured and captured in battle against US trained Bolivian elite soldiers. After being identified by the CIA, he was executed in local primary school building. After that his body was flown to the hospital of Vallegrande to be put on show to the world. The laundry of the hospital where we are now, is the only physical reminder of this episode in history. To cover up all traces, the army destroyed all the buildings (including the primary school) that had anything to do with Che. The hospital however needed its laundry. So this building is still here. And is now a bit of pilgrimage location.

After the media had seen the corpse, it quickly disappeared. For 30 years it lay hidden under the landing strip of the local airport. In 1997 one of the soldiers who buried Che told his secret and the body was excavated. Today the remains are in a huge monument in Santa Clara, Cuba. But the site here is still marked by a mausoleum and museum.

Ever since leaving Sucre we hardly see any other travelers. But then all of a sudden we find ourselves in ‘backpacker central’ in Samaipata. We visit the El Fuerte archeological site which felt slightly disappointing…We have probably seen a bit too many ‘old stones’ the last couple of months.

Instead of the traditional Pan America route from Bolivia to Chile/Argentina, we have decided to do a huge (4000 km) detour through Brazil and Paraguay. We need one more full tank of diesel to get out of the country. And we I had recommendations on where that should be possible… But there is no diesel there. And neither is there any at the next stations we try. Other stations do have diesel but do not want to sell to foreigners. We continue to drive from one station to the other but can’t find anything. After trying for 4 hours in and around the city of Santa Cruz we finally find someone who wants to sell us the last diesel they have at the pump. Very relieved we quickly get out of town before the sun sets. For us this diesel thing is ‘annoying’ but in this agricultural part of Bolivia, it is really a nightmare. Harvest time is here but there is no diesel for the machines to harvest…

On our way out of Bolivia, we visit the very nicely restored ‘Jesuit missions’ of San Jose de Chiquitos and San Ignacio de Velasco. Jesuits came exploring the (then) deep jungle of Paraguay and from there ventured into Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina. They founded their own autonomous religious state and set up ‘utopia’ like communities. Here Indigenous people could live and work to escape slavery or the ‘encomienda’ (feudal) system under the Spanish rulers. That was of course if they were willing to abandon their own beliefs and follow the strict Jesuit rules. In the mid 18th century a dispute between the Vatican, Spain & Portugal got nearly all the Jesuits evicted from their missions in South America. This whole part of history in this region was all but completely forgotten. But in the 1980’s a revival started. The movie ‘the Mission’ with Robert De Niro from 1984 was part of that revival. The last 30 years many of these missions have been beautifully restored and now more and more tourists make it to this far corner of Bolivia.

With the rising sun, we leave San Ignacio and start a 300 km gravel road to the border. We drive past a last diesel queue. Luckily we can skip it. We have just emptied our jerrycans in the tank so we have plenty of diesel to get into Brazil. The road from San Ignacio de Velasco to the Brazilian border is probably the worst drive of our trip so far. Not only is the washboard terrible but there are also large potholes that can really destroy our campervan. We air down the tires and decide on 1 hour driving shifts. After each hour we are exhausted.
This whole area in Bolivia used to be jungle and wetlands (it borders the Brazilian Pantanal) but now 90 pct has been turned into cow grazing lands. And even with the massive unseen wildfires that are going on everywhere, we still come across farmers who are burning down the last remaining jungle…for more cows and hamburgers for the world. In the late afternoon, when the heat gets a bit less, we start to see plenty of cool animals.

We arrive in the border town of San Martin just before the sun sets and drive straight to the main plaza (our favourite last minute sleeping spot in South America). The next day we leave Bolivia, a country with so much potential. We hope that at some point, the people will get the leaders they deserve so everyone can benefit from the enormous (strategic) commodities that are under the ground all over the country.

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