On Dynamite, Mining Troubles and Salty Coffee

Vitichi

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Attraction | "On Dynamite, Explosions and a Blocked Bridge"

River Delimiting the Village Photo - Potosi, Bolivia

Quote:

I recognized the place, though I didn’t know its name; I had crossed the tiny adobe village while traveling between Potosi and Tupiza several times. But, this time something was different, the road was blocked.Two hours earlier, at 4 AM, I had boarded the bus in Potosi. The driver was saying something about "passing before the blockade begins." The reference was too vague and roadblocks in Bolivia are too common for me paying attention to his words. I boarded the bus and sealed my fate for the next day.6 AM, VitichiRather sleepy,...Read More

I recognized the place, though I didn’t know its name; I had crossed the tiny adobe village while traveling between Potosi and Tupiza several times. But, this time something was different, the road was blocked.

Two hours earlier, at 4 AM, I had boarded the bus in Potosi. The driver was saying something about "passing before the blockade begins." The reference was too vague and roadblocks in Bolivia are too common for me paying attention to his words. I boarded the bus and sealed my fate for the next day.

6 AM, Vitichi

Rather sleepy, I opened one eye and tried to understand why the bus had stopped. We were meters ahead of a bridge I recognized. Being at the end of the rainy season I assumed that the area ahead of us was flooded. Usually that means a short delay until the driver finds a suitable place for crossing the stream. I went back to sleep.

Minutes later, people started shouting. "It’s time to find out what’s going on," I thought and left the bus. Unexpectedly, the tiny bridge was blocked by a crowd and a bunch of branches. Three tires where burning.

Next to the bridge was a big sign. It stated the name of the place was Vitichi and that we were ninety kilometers south of Potosi.

The Roadblock and the Assembly

An assembly between the local leader, the travelers and the drivers stuck on the place was called and soon the situation became clear. An hour earlier, five road blocks had been placed at the entrances of Potosi, Vitichi, Cotagaita, Tupiza and Villazon. That meant the highway connecting La Quiaca in Argentina with Potosi was blocked; moreover, we couldn’t move neither backward nor forward since we were between two roadblocks. Five buses and a similar quantity of cars waited in our side of the bridge, but the other side was empty, since nobody driving the highway northwards managed to reach Vitichi before the blockade began.

The drivers became agitated when they heard the roadblock was scheduled to last 48 hours. "It may be shortened and the road cleared by midnight," the local leader added with little conviction. I was happy; it was an opportunity to explore the place and to see an unusual event; the delay was irrelevant. However, for the bus drivers it meant a substantial lose of incomes and they kept trying to convince the local leader to let us pass. It wouldn’t have helped us, because then we would get stuck in Cotagaita, a narrow point that cannot be bypassed. I guessed the drivers assumed to be able to convince the people there as well.

Bearing an impressive moustache and a wide hat, the local leader kept refusing. At some point he almost broke into tears and said: "we are infiltrated, they cause damage." The statement made too much sense in the Bolivian reality; it also told me we would stay stuck for a long time.

The people were blocking the road as a protest for the stopping of the asphalting works on the highway. After two years of work, most of it is still unpaved. The works were stopped because of technical problems; apparently the equipment used was not suitable for the task, though nobody knew for sure.

In any case a roadblock in Bolivia is like snow in a Canadian winter: no news. The chance of the item reaching the news was low, especially since little merchandise is moved along this route. Except for the travelers nobody would suffer.

Vitichi is part of the Nor Chichas Province of Potosi, a department in which mining is still a main industry. Miners in Bolivia protest using dynamite sticks and accordingly until noon, three sticks were thrown in the bridge vicinity. Those stressed the protesters determination and send me away into the village.

Vitichi

Next to the bridge was the low structure of the local market. I entered it surveyed the stalls and asked for directions to the main plaza. "Just walk straight in that direction," they said and pointed. It was easier to say than to do, the village main road was featured a curve every few meters.

The village was larger than expected, simply it run perpendicular to the highway until it reached a wide and shallow river and thus it couldn’t be appreciated while traveling on the highway.

Most of the houses were of the adobe; many of them were sealed and in various states of disintegration. Bolivia is passing through a rapid urbanization process and most rural areas are being abandoned.

The main plaza featured a large church and was found next to the river; a bridge too big for such a tiny village was being constructed, though I could see only bare hills across the stream. Except for a few open grocery shops and a few people walking among them, I could see no activity. I returned to the bridge through a different route and visited another adobe church by the highway.

Soon, I was back at the market. The structure was surrounded by people waiting for the roadblock to clear and vendors selling all kind of snacks. Within a nearby tree was an empty shrine, its door seemed to be part of the trunk. A pyramid shaped hill in front of it featured a house on its top, no path lead to it. A grocery shop was run by an elder woman who had troubles dealing with her establishment sudden popularity. A communications services kiosk advertised an internet kiosk. "6 BOB an hour" I was answered; the price requested for the connection was three times higher than in La Paz and the computer twenty years older. I didn’t manage to check my emails there though to technical problems with the equipment.

The Next Step

Before noon I found I have exhausted the place capability to entertain me. In the best case I assumed to have at least another twelve hours of waiting. Eating became the only entertainment option.

Inside the market, a woman standing in a clean stall was holding a big chunk of meat and chopping it in what looked as in a random fashion.

"What will you prepare?" I asked hoping to taste some local delicacy.

"Food!" she said in an extra-dry tone and sent me running away. Who knows what would be the next target of her knife.

Another vendor offered me coffee despite the fact the coffee hour was over. That’s one of the strangest peculiarities of Bolivians. They don’t care about time. Once they made me wait three hours for a meeting and didn’t even apologize for the delay. But they run their eating schedules with the precision of a Swiss watch and the temper of zealots. Soon a "destilado" coffee (see the Imperio Inca entry in this journal for details) was placed in front of me with a round loaf of local bread. The radio playing in the background was bilingual Quechua-Spanish.

Later I tried an unremarkable lamb dish – though only pigs could be seen on the streets - and left for the bridge.

Waiting

At noon, the altitude sun sent everybody to search for shelter. The bridge was almost clear, only a few branches blocked it, yet nobody spoke of crossing it. Another striking characteristic of the Bolivians is that road blockades and road blocking marches are used as a protest against any imaginable thing; however, protesting against the protest and the roadblock is unthinkable.

People returned in the late afternoon, when menacing clouds and lightning appeared southwards. "Would the blockers stay in the rain?" I thought but didn’t ask that aloud. People were touchy and I didn’t want to agitate them.

There were talks of opening the bridge around 7 PM. At 6 PM, some people approached the protesters and started arguing with them. "They are Peruvians," the people kept saying, referring to the arguing people; usually, Bolivians share their blames equally among Chileans and Peruvians. The only thing they managed to reach was to make the protesters angry. An assembly of the entire village was called and afterwards they started exploding dynamite sticks. I counted almost thirty.

Now there was no chance they would open the bridge before they got a signal from the protest headquarters in Potosi. Tired, I went to sleep in the bus.

A few minutes before midnight the road was opened and we left; soon we entered a rainy area.

Three hours later, amid a torrential rain, the bus got stuck in the mud.
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on April 22, 2009

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Villazon

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Attraction | "Villazon: Between Two Worlds"

Quote:

Interface points between cultures are of special interest for travelers; in no other place the essence of travelling is so distilled, nowhere else the little local nuisances are so might and bold. When crossing from Mexico to the US or from Thailand to Cambodia, the changes are obvious. Cultures, languages and sometimes even the alphabets are not the same. Other...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on April 22, 2009

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Empresa Ferroviaria Andina (FCA Bolivia)

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Attraction | "An Andean Iron Rooster"

Quote:

South American railways barely exist today; buses have conquered most of the routes there, as it happened in most of the world. Travelling from Kathmandu to Pokhara by train is not possible. Try reaching La Quiaca from Mendoza by train; it is not possible. Many railways were closed and many lines were cut in length during the last decades; I...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on April 22, 2009

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Imperio Inca

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Restaurant | "On Coffee and Salt"

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LocationSpeaking of location in a place as small as Villazon may look superfluous, yet Imperio Inca enjoys a superb spot in town, right on the kitty corner of the central plaza and in front of the bus terminal. In a city that is nothing else but the main travel hub between two countries – Argentina and Bolivia - that means the main spot in town.The ConceptImperio Inca is a combination between a travel agency and a coffee shop. After a recent redesign process in which they gave up half the shop space to a phone cabins...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on April 22, 2009

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Snack Pizzeria Don Vicco

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Restaurant | "On "Almuerzos" and Set Meals"

Snack Pizzeria Don Vicco Photo - Villazon, Bolivia

Quote:

There aren’t many options for a lunch in Villazon. Food plazas in the various markets do not offer attractive options and most of the restaurants are extremely basic. One of the best hotels in town used to have a good restaurant – it even charged Argentinean prices - but in my last visit the place was close. Following a short tour of downtown Villazon, I found that Snack Pizzeria Don Vicco became the best option for a lunch in town.Where is Don Vicco?Villazon isn’t big, yet amid the many markets and the crowds exploring them, finding a shop may be difficult, especially during market days, when those swell up and the town becomes one large market. Luckil...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 22, 2009

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