Nosotros, los de allá

Equipped with a backpack and the Lonely Planet guide, off to the Potosi silver mines! An excursion not to be missed, as you can see miners working as in another age. “At first, it’s rather impressive. It’s filthy, hot, but very exciting. Can’t do it in Europe, no?” For the Bolivians in the region, this reality-tourism is a stroke of luck… a local official is even planning to do up the setting to give it that colonial atmosphere that “works” so well. One miner puts it in a nutshell: “You travel, we work.”