good talk

There were 2 very personable Indian tour guides with 10 tourists apiece for the tour of the Cerra Rico Mine (correct spelling). First we had to buy six sticks of dynamite and some goodies for the mine workers so that they'll tolerate us, soda pop, coca leaves (big bag), bags of chips. While this was going on I bought a bowl of llama stew (also cute n' tasty) for fifty cents to fortify my innards for the task at hand. Then our guides had us don miners clothes and boots for the arduous half mile climb into the mountain. My mistake was selecting boots too small, these things are hard and you need some room so you don't hurt your toes. We also wore miners lamps on our hardhats. The only other American was some guy "63," I was almost "60" and the other 18 were all Europeans or Australians of college age. Into the mine we went (if you ever go to Cadiz, Spain, the cathedral was the last built with riches from the New World), they say that the Cerra Rico built the Spanish Armada. Many, many thousands of slaves died in there, at first they used the Indians but later used African slaves as they could work harder and survived longer. The Catholic Church initially banned coca leaves as evil intoxicants but relented when the Spanish learned that the slaves could work much harder while chewing them. It's rough as heck climbing all hunched over into that mine which gets hotter and hotter, there's a track running through the passage and you have to step to the side every so often for an ore car to pass. Zinc, lead and some silver, not a lot, are what the mine produces today and boy is that hard work! The workers seemed happy with our gifts, glad to brighten up their day. My boots began to hurt me with every step I took and 2 weeks later my left big toenail came off, I was actually glad to get back to the surface. We were 14,000 feet up and that was quite an effort. Once outside we were all standing around when I heard a voice behind me say, "Hold this." It was my affable tour guide and what he handed me was a lit stick of dynamite. Some of the others also were holding lit sticks of dynamite which fortunately our tour guides gathered up after a bit, I said, "Let's not forget any," which drew a general laugh. The guides took the dynamite off a ways and then ran away while letting it explode. It was a dynamite tour and a memorable experience, I tipped each of the guides $6 in their money, I then urged the rest of the group to tip them something and nobody else tipped them anything. Such bad conduct goes against my grain and when we all got on the bus I said loudly, "You're all a bunch of cheap bastards!" They actually seemed to take my critique well, I guess that I could have been more subtle but how are young people to learn if older people don't teach them? I paid some guy $9 to drive me a hundred miles to Sucre (with him chomping on coca leaves all the way) and then took 3 buses (and a third of that was hard bump city) over a day to Iquique, Chile and got the bus for a day-long trip to Santiago, it's very good and I hadn't been there for 17 years, and 2 days later flew to Easter Island.