Comment by jajko
12 days ago
Potosi is well worth the visit, if anybody had ever doubts how brutal slavery could be, look no more. Slaves lasted 6 weeks before dying horribly in some of the jobs they had, mostly in ore processing parts. Or if you want to see why its really not a good idea to be pregnant in >4000m altitude, look at their local church.
Mines themselves are surprisingly still open and locals work there, even if they know very well within 15-20 years most of them will develop aggressive lung cancer. IIRC its from fine silica dust that is all over those mines in form of thick dust (and sometimes even raw crystals form on the walls). The hill in which the mines are is pure emmental, around 5000 entries IIRC from various directions and ages.
Visited them with my wife/fiancée few years ago, local woman whose husband died from what I described above guided us quite deep inside. Never saw actual red sticks of dynamite with the burning string till that day. We offered very strong alcohol and coca leaves to Pachamama, had some leaves with 'activator' ourselves (and then went blabbing for half an hour due to mouth and tongue anesthesia). Those silica in the air are not benign, so there are warnings everywhere (and good modern masks should definitely help, we didn't have those unfortunately this was well before covid).
A powerful experience, as backpacking around whole Bolivia is, to us its the most interesting country in South America to visit for intense adventure and lifelong memories. Yungas death road on a rented bike is another very memorable experience, from snowed plains and glaciers 4700m high into jungle in few hours.
Kris Lane[0] has excellent work on potosi
Potosi - "the first global city" [1] Potosi: The Silver City That Changed the World by Kris Lane[2]
I've encountered Kris's work during the pandemic; He released a book "Pandemic in Potosí: Fear, Loathing, and Public Piety in a Colonial Mining Metropolis" [3] about the pandemic in 1719 which killed third of the city
Potosi as a silver hotspot had a coin mint, and of course it had a fraud[4]
https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/history/people/faculty-staff-... https://aeon.co/essays/potosi-the-mountain-of-silver-that-wa... https://www.amazon.com/Potosi-Changed-California-History-Lib... https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09198-3.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Potos%C3%AD_Mint_Fraud_o...
I do not know much about Bolivia. The little I know comes from this series by the travel vlogger Bald and Bankrupt: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqWdYjn21PdFLL0gOBMRf3Hmy...
The impression this series gives is that Bolivia can be somewhat dangerous.
For instance, from his Wikipedia article, the ... video about a trip to Patamanta in Bolivia was reported by Gizmodo Español as "more scary than entering Chernobyl". In the video, he informed a local woman that he was a tourist, prompting her to warn him that "they burn people" in the area. Two men later approached Rich, inspected his passport, and gave him 30 minutes to explore and leave the area.
And that video actually is terrifying.
But, given that you backpacked around Bolivia with your fiance, your experience must have been different? Was Bald unfair to Bolivia? Is it relatively safe?
Bolivia was a high point in my trekking around S. America. I felt perfectly safe, and had no negative experiences. Beautiful kind people. In La Paz, I asked directions from a random passerby to their electronics market (I wanted to replace a pair of lost headphones), and the man cautioned me that some sellers might try to take advantage of me. He asked me what I was after, and told me what he would expect to pay. But, I had no issues, the price offered, by the first seller I approached, for a pair of Sony ear buds was less than $4-- the headphones only differed in color from the pair I had lost-- I had paid $16 at Target in the US for them.
I was alone, and, when in urban areas, mostly stayed in the hotels in the spaces above street-level businesses that are not geared toward foreign tourists (Spanish required). Except for La Paz, it was less than $10/night and usually between a few dollars to $5. Food was inexpensive and excellent too.
There were amazing historical sites. And, really interesting "hmmmmmm" contemporary things to encounter, if paying attention-- e.g., there was a tribe near Rurrenabaque that spoke Quechua?! (A language you would expect to encounter in central Peru, not there).
The Bolivian high desert is so high that the low hills are topped in ice (14000ft/4000m at the valley floor) and in the low-lands are tropical jungles and pampas. While trekking in the jungle, I saw Tapirs, sloth, jaguar scat/tracks, caiman (alligator/crocodile type animal), spider monkeys, howler monkeys, so many birds... It was amazing!
You will need some level of proficiency in Spanish, unless sticking to tourist places, but even then Spanish will be helpful though not required.
Highly recommend.
(for those unaccustomed to seeing men with guns, you will encounter men with rifles e.g., outside banks, in large cities like La Paz-- so, yes crime exists, but I didn't ever feel that sketch feeling where you decide it is time to leave a place, or not enter it, in the first place-- Bolivia felt very safe to me)
> there was a tribe near Rurrenabaque that spoke Quechua?! (A language you would expect to encounter in central Peru, not there).
Quechuan languages are quite widespread, including over large areas of Bolivia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechuan_languages
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It's definitely not "relatively safe" in what I as a European would consider a safe place - although I was told it got a lot better in the last decade. If you look like a rich tourist than you need to be careful, like pretty much anywhere in S. America. However if you present yourself as a nomad hippie looser with nothing worth the trouble of messing with you, you can go around and probably you'll have no big problems, but still requires a bit of common sense in interaction with people. And speaking at least some Spanish. It's not that people are not friendly, they're just poor, and the line between being friendly and hustling you is very thin.
Entering Chernobyl is not scary unless you go digging in a few highly radioactive places like ruzzian soldiers did in 2022.
Prior that, you could go to Chernobyl with a tour and it was absolutely safe. Much safer than walking around random US city, actually.
Yeah, that one confused me too. Visiting Chernobyl was mostly a walk in a park, as no other people around and forrest slowly taking over everything. Honestly, it felt way safer than big cities in Ukraine to me - hell, even safer than big cities in my own country :)
"Is it relatively safe?"
I have not been to Bolivia myself, but this question is always relative.
It depends what you count as save and where do you want to go, but also on your experience.
"for intense adventure and lifelong memories. Yungas death road on a rented bike is another very memorable experience"
Parent seems to have a higher risk tolerance.
Also it matters a lot, if you can speak spanish and can act like a local. But if you look and act like a helpless gringo tourist, then you will likely get robbed or worse on the first day.
But I know people who hitchhiked there without serious trouble as white gringos. So the answer is probably, it depends.
I have more than a year of cumulative backpacking experience all around the world when its just you, guide book ie Lonely planet and a loose plan for maybe next 2-4 days, mostly India but also other places. I don't know if that makes me one with 'higher risk tolerance', definitely higher than 0 to actually experience anything interesting. But I do some more intense sports like climbing or paragliding where some risk is unavoidable and you do your best to minimize your exposure to it, and this mindset then permeates rest of your persona.
As for Bolivia, what parent described sounds like some extreme case of 'I walk randomly into favela with gold chain around the neck and rolex watches and shit happened' kind of foolish beginner behavior. Backpacking gives you some instincts what not to do. Did I feel safe in Bolivia in those few places we've done? Absolutely. Is the whole country completely safe in any situation? Most probably not, or it wasn't in 2018, no idea about current affairs. Btw neither me nor my fiancee/wife speak spanish, you can get by with 20 words if you have to.
I've gone to Iran in cca 2015 (Mont Damavand, a bit of culture), an amazing experience and one of my best. Wouldn't go there currently, not because common people got bad (no, they were amazing and everybody spoke english well) but politics made it unsafe.
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Death road on a mountain bike isn’t all that dangerous. It got its name because it used to be the only route to and from Brasil. So you would get 2 way traffic of like box trucks on a smallish dirt road with a sheer cliff drop off on one side and a mountain on the other. Lots of them went off the cliff.
Now you can book a tour and they provide nice bikes and follow the group in a minivan. There is still some cars and such but it is mostly locals or tour groups. They built a modern highway so that route isn’t used for trucks anymore.
It is super beautiful and not really dangerous unless you want it to be. Totally worth it.
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Everywhere has their bad parts. I arrived in La Paz in rough shape, as I hadn't slept on the red eye on the way in. I could have easily been taken advantage of. Instead the taxi driver took me right where I was going, helped me unload and communicate with the front desk of the building where my airbnb was.
The people are really friendly, generous, and happy.
I can't wait to go back
Like with a lot of countries in South America, there are certainly places you shouldn't just wander about in. VRAEM in Peru is another example. But there is a lot of tourism in Bolivia. Most places are perfectly safe. Lonely Planet can be a good place to start if you're unsure.
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