Field Notes: Tundra Runs with Wolves

As soon as we spotted her and got a sense of her scale, we ran across the tundra, paralleling her, and clamoured through a swamp and up to the top of the esker.  I had my bear spray out of my pack.  "I'll get the bear-spray ready, you get your camera ready," Dave said. " This will either be a good story or a really bad story". 

The arctic wolf bounded across the tundra in a fraction of the time we did. She stared at us from a distance, trying to make out what we were.  Staring us down, she ran towards us with her tail straight on and her ears back. Dave sprayed the bear spray in her general direction so she would get a bit of the pepper to make sure she stayed well away from us, and hopefully all humans.  She backed off, and ran up over a hummock, and stopped at the top to study us more.  

The helicopter pilot had just dropped us off, and was on his way back to the mine to fuel up.  When we radioed him in all he caught was 'canine' and 'horizon'. There was no way he could turn back with the small amount of fuel in his tank, so he made off to fuel up as fast as he could.  We continued on, digging holes and rubbing sediment through our hands, studying the composition, with our eyes consistently on the horizon. She never did come back, and our helicopter arrived before we were too lost in paranoia.

This is the first time I've been to the arctic arctic since 2011, when I completed my fieldwork for a diamond company in Baffin Island. Canada's eastern arctic on Baffin Island is, of course, much different than the central arctic.  

The tundra is breathtaking as the colours change. We arrived in the third week of August, and about ten days in the colours seemed to explode. Yesterday, as we landed the helicopter in a large thermokarst land system, the colours were blazed by the sun, and I ran around digging holes, studying the sediment, filling the holes back in, describing this and that.  Summer is precious and shortlived, and filled with so many blackflies and mosquitos that it makes you miss winter. 

The tundra in the fall

Flying over the land you see what has been shaped by ice and water, and how the rock beneath orchestrates. There are so many lakes that your head spins; some deep and full of the largest fresh water trout you'll ever see; others shallow allowing ice to reach its depths during winter.  

Sometimes you wonder how you ended up where you are, but as the helicopter dropped me off in a field of cloudberries,  giving me a chance to graze on arctic berry all the way to a beach to study the modern material as an analogue to sediments thousands of years old, I I felt like I was in the right place. I'm happy that I'll be coming back again soon. 

Height of my fishing career (it has peaked)

The Mines of Potosi

October 28th-29th, 2015

I caught the bus at 9:30 this morning from Sucre to Potosi, one of the highest cities in the world at 4,090 m asl.  Potosi is a city famous for making its fortune off one of the biggest silver deposits ever discovered. The city is built around the skirts of Cerro Rico, the mountain that provided Spain its silver

The mines of Potosi have been open since the 1500s. The Quechua were mining the silver before the Spanish arrived, who renamed it Cerra Rico (rich mountain). Cerra Rico made Potosi one of the richest towns in South America, though when major production of silver stopped, the town (like many mining towns) struggled  greatly. 

 There are no geologists or engineers who work in the mines. The ore is being mined by artisanal miners, who have years of passed down knowledge about the geology (mostly N/S running veins, for example, with some crosscutting steeper veins which are harder to mine), mineralogy (ZnS, AgS, and some CuS) and engineering of the mines.

Big Deal  is the only company that has ex-miners run tours of the mines. In Potosi, mining is a good profession. If you find or hit a good vein, it can make a miner extremely wealthy. We met one miner who ‘struck silver’, and now makes 10,000 bolivianos/ month, and has a team of miners working for him. 

Before we started on the tour, we went to an old lady and bought the miners gifts of orange juice and coca leaves, which we were encouraged to chew before going into the mine to ward of thirst and to give us an energy boost. Coca leaves, to me, are similar to caffeine. 

The miners loosen the rock with dynamite. Dynamite is legal to buy at a corner store in Potosi from children, tourists, grandmas etc.  The miners of course use the dynamite to loosen the rock. Once its set off, they give it a day for the dust to settle and then come back and load it in old-school mining buckets set on train tracks to bring to the surface. 

The conditions in the mine are pretty dismal. There is dust everywhere which hurt my throat and eyes after the 3 hour tour. I was crawling on my hands and knees through the tunnels connecting the different levels. There is no air ventilation to the lower levels, so it makes the lower levels of the mine hot (surprisingly) and stale. 

When you enter the mine, it is splattered with lama blood.  The miners sacrifice lamas every year to Pacha Mama for safety and fertility (more ore). The main deity in the mines is Diablo, which isn’t the Catholic devil, but simply the god of the mines and minerals. There are a few paper machete figures of the diablo, with open hands full of coca leaves, a heart of silver, and a ridiculously large penis (which the tour guide, Pedro, referred to as the big situation). A lama fetus was lain at his feet, his open mouth was stuffed with cigarettes, and he was swimming in a pile of coca leaves which flowed from his open hands.  

This was one of my favourite experiences in Bolivia. It's awe inspiring to see how well the miners know the hills. It is heartbreaking to hear the stories of the lives mining has claimed. The differences between the mines of Potosi and the mines I've visited in Canada are vast. It is one of those experiences that makes you appreciate what you have while developing respect for people living in the current experience. 

Irazú Volcano

This morning, after eating a tantalizing breakfast under the courtyard canopy of Hotel Aranjuez, my friend Dennis' brother Javier picked me up to go check out Volcano Irazu.

Irazu is a complex startovolcano with multiple craters, of one which holds a gem coloured lake. The last eruption was in 1963 which showered the area in ash. Unsuprisingly, the entire base of the volcano is fertile farmland. 

We picked up his girlfriend Daniella and we headed up the agricultural spread base of the mountain. It took about 1.5 hours to drive there, and it was gorgeous all of the way up.

I almost peed my pants with excitement because it was my first time up close to a volcano.  When I got there, it smelled like volcano (sulfur). Unfortunately though, it was really foggy and I couldn't see the lake in crater. Even though I didn't get to see the crater lake, the fog cleared up from time to time and I saw the layers of ash along the crater, as well as the steep drop to what would be the centre. 

Looking into the crater on a foggy day

I'm pretty sure Javier and Daniella thought I was a huge geek because I was running around like an excited kid explaining the different types of rocks, the ash, how volcanos form etc. 

Daniella and Javier with the view

Me and the view. (Javier and Daniella are both professional photographers. I need to learn how to make my camera do this! :) )

There were plants called "Poor Man's Umbrella" which had monstrous green leaves that turned white when they died. There were also pretty red and yellow flowers that looked like fire. Cute white faced racoons roamed the park and desperate for food, just like Toronto racoons. 

I shall dub these fire flowers

On the way back down we stopped at a restaurant called Linda Vista, which had a pretty view of the city below when the clouds opened up. The best part of everything was hanging out with two Costa Ricans as they showed me such a cool part of their country.

P.S. This is what the volcano looks like when it's not rainy (thanks Wikipedia) :)