Trips to the Cerro Rico de Potosi

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The Cerro Rico de Potosi, Bolivia, gets up every morning smaller. The red, ocher, brown and silver is lost through your pores after centuries of mortal wounds. Farther and farther from the sun and closer to the fire of the deep, the mountain became known to Potosi in the world and dragged his people into a nightmare of tunnels, passageways and slavery, still dominates the city, but every day slightly smaller.

Adventure travel in Bolivia

Photography by RastaChango

The city wakes up early. Just look at first light to 4,067 meters above sea level when its inhabitants, accustomed to rationing of oxygen, they start a new day, for many of them deep in the beautiful hill or Orcko Sumaj.

The ‘guy’, a devil from the depths, perhaps the only one to have, was imposed by the colonizers and mine owners to control and intimidate a slave laborers who dug silver rivers change their lives. As the dark side of the Pachamama, the ‘uncle’ of mine overflows cultural and religious syncretism, where Catholic beliefs are mixed with the worship of the indigenous peoples of Bolivia for natural elements.

Cultural and religious aspect in Potosi:

With 7,570 meters square and almost 15,000 square meters, an idea that is a little luxury that walked the streets of Potosi. The palace museum keeps surprising since their own wealth in some of the objects on display. Tureens, teapots carved forms and children’s furnishings implausible or give us a clue to figure out the mad thirst for wealth and ostentation that lived with one of the saddest stories of slavery and cruel.

According to figures and testimonies of the time only the first 28 years of operation is testimony that the Treasury spent a balance Potosi King of Spain which was the product of silver mining from 1545 to 1573 had been 820,513. 893 hard, more than the amount that was estimated cash flow circulating in all European states.

The Cerro Rico de Potosi

Photography by Adam Jones, Ph.D.

It is in the Mint, where we also dive in the deep sea, far from Potosi, but which are still hiding some of its treasures. The sunken ship Atocha is one of those stories of treasure hunters to give a frame of film. The greatest treasure ever found, the most coveted price. This beautiful galleon of 550 tons, only about two years when he left in 1622 sailing from Havana along with 28 boats, laden with the great treasures of America and towards Europe.

Ship Nuestra Senora de Atocha:

Among its valuable cargo, 1,038 silver ingots (weighing 24 tons), 125 gold bars and discs, 350 chests of indigo, 525 bales of snuff, 1,200 pounds of silver objects and 180,000 pieces of silver coin. That said, the manifest, so we must add a number of jewelry and other valuables not reported, which was common in this type of transport to avoid the actual taxes.

Rescue treasure by Mel Fisher team:

The treasure hunter Mel Fisher, obsessed with finding the wreck of Nuestra Senora de Atocha, was ruined in business, but finally managed to find the boat in 1969. From the Mint of Potosi also dream to show these valuable pieces, but can only refer to the story and a photograph in black and white, because the treasure is in the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society of Florida. But here is not complete because it was auctioned in 1988 part of the riches of Atocha and Fisher says that there is still gold in the seabed.

Trips to the Cerro Rico de Potosi

Photography by gaiamisiones.blogspot.com

Thus Potosi falls at the foot of Cerro Rico!

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