How to dive to 20m on one lungful of air

I took a freediving course this weekend with the very professional and safety-oriented Carlos Correa, an instructor living in Santa Marta. I am now a certified level 1 FII Freediver! As part of the course, you are required to make a constant weight dive to 20m. Here is the video of my attempt:

Freediving is an incredibly intriguing sport and I really hope to learn a lot more about it. We hit the open water in a kayak on Sunday, but Saturday was spent in the pool practicing safety techniques and out of the pool covering theory, which I will share a sample of below.

There is a timeline consisting of many events before drowning actually occurs. It looks something like this:

Commence breathhold-------low oxygen causes muscle convulsions-------blackout-------terminal gasp and drowning.

At the start of the breathhold when you are pumped full of oxygen, obviously there are no problems. As the carbon dioxide levels rise, the urge to breathe rises with it. Imagine the urge to breathe as a red devil sitting in front of you. At the start he is sitting quietly, then as time goes on he stands up and starts whispering "time to breathe now" in your ear. Slowly he gets more and more agitated until he starts jumping on your lap, yanking on your ears, yelling, beating you over the head with a tin pan and trying to pull you out of your seat. Your task if you want any chance at all of staying a long time underwater is to do your best to zen out and ignore him completely. You can do this for a very long time if you have good mental discipline. But it can be extremely difficult and takes MUCHO practice to get good at. I can manage 3:30 on the surface but I haven't ever managed more than 2:30 underwater.

It is possible to withstand the urge to breathe long enough (for example by using calm meditation techniques) that the oxygen level in the blood drops too low to support proper brain function. The result is "the Samba" a kind of spasming which occurs when motor control is lost. Then follows total blackout. Blackout is the body's response to low oxygen. It shuts down all non-essential survival processes (including consciousness) and goes into a kind of hibernation in which it can survive for four to six minutes. Surprisingly, no damage occurs at all during blackout, it is a normal bodily process, and you will revive as soon as your face is exposed to the air.

The terminal gasp is the final panic button, when the body is critically low on oxygen and there is absolutely no time left, you will unconsciously suck in a huge lungful of whatever is around you. If you are underwater, this will lead to drowning and is fatal.

So even with no training at all you probably could survive at least 8 minutes underwater before suffering permanent damage. This is very reassuring. The number one rule is

ALWAYS DIVE WITH A BUDDY


People always recover from a blackout, but ONLY IF they are exposed to air again. You cannot do this yourself if you are passed out. But a buddy has a good few minutes of time to swim down, grab you, and pull you up. Google shallow water blackout for more info on this.

On to theory. Millions of years of evolution have provided the human body with a surprising number of adaptions that allow it to survive for a long time underwater.

• Your brain will not allow you to breathe in while your face or mouth is wet. You will probably suffer diaphragm contractions, where your lungs jerk trying to suck in air that isn't available. I had a few of these on my way down to 20m. But I found my body to be extremely adverse to actually inhaling water. Even in blackout you will not inhale water until the terminal gasp, so you don't have to worry about that.
• At twenty metres the pressure is three atmospheres. That means your lungs are compressed to one third of their normal size. I felt this squeeze, and I have to say it didn't bother me at all. It feels pretty natural actually. Champion freedivers have reached more than 200m or 21 atmospheres of pressure and come up unharmed. At this depth your lungs are smaller than oranges. Nobody knows what the actual limit is but it's probably pretty deep.
• When your face hits cold water, the mammalian diving reflex kicks in. This is an ancient reflex present in all mammals, stemming from our seagoing ancestors. It gives you a variety of advantages, including lowered heart rate and constriction of the outermost capillaries, resulting in decreased blood flow to the muscles and more oxygen for the vital organs.

To get the most out of your dive, I learned three techniques that are absolutely essential.

Firstly, proper breathe-up technique.

This is how you prepare your body for a dive. I have been doing this wrong for years, I used to hyperventilate excessively which does the opposite of what you want. Firstly, it plummets the carbon dioxide levels in your lungs. High carbon dioxide levels are not harmful for short periods, but are the major factor in controlling your urge to breathe. Pushing these too low will remove the alarm bell that tells you when to surface, this is EXTREMELY dangerous and can lead to blackout. The other downside is that heavy, fast breathing primes the body for physical activity. It gets your brain excited and pumps the heart rate. Great for sprinting but absolutely terrible for diving.


NEVER HYPERVENTILATE.

The way you should do it, is slow, relaxed diaphragmatic breathing (ie from the stomach) for a couple of minutes. Then one maximum inhalation right before submerging. With your final inhalation, it helps to relax completely, tilt your head up to open your airway, and lift your shoulders. Try to feel yourself expanding. Do not strain to push more air into your lungs, this will tense your muscles and burn oxygen.

Secondly, ear equalisation.

This is the achilles heel of freedivers. We descend so fast that we must equalise the pressure in our ears very frequently to compensate for the pressure. If you don't do this you will experience a lot of pain, and if you continue descending your eardrums will rupture. Most people need to equalise by holding their nose and blowing, or using their tongue as a piston to force air through the Eustachian tubes into the ears. Apparently some people have the rare ability to open their Eustachian tubes at will. Chances are, if you can move your ears, you can do this. It's a great advantage in freediving because it frees your hands up and makes you more streamlined. Actually I can do this (and move my ears too) but while I was diving I was so busy thinking about everything else I needed to hold my nose at the same time to make sure. With a little practice I'm certain I could do this hands free and equalization will no longer be a problem for me.

Thirdly, RELAX.

This is probably the most important part, and maybe the hardest. Every single tense muscle burns oxygen. Every thought burns oxygen. Every movement burns oxygen. A zen master would make a fantastic freediver because he can control his body and his thoughts.

Try relaxing when you know you have twenty metres of water above your head and the little devil is ringing alarm bells in your ear telling you to breathe. It's not that easy. But panicking underwater is not going to help AT ALL. If you allow yourself to become agitated, or thinking there is any kind of threat, your body responds by pumping heart rate and tensing ready for action. This sucks oxygen like a vacuum cleaner.

You must train yourself with the mental discipline required to look away from the panicked thoughts and be totally calm. Do everything slowly. The biggest reason the master freedivers can reach such depths and you can't is not lung capacity or even swimming technique. It is mental control. It is the ability to focus on happy thoughts, be calm and peaceful under a situation that would make most people immediately panic and start flailing.

This is the aspect I like most about freediving. It is essentially meditation, but with a purpose. It encourages elite levels of self-control and focus. I'd really like to explore more this aspect of the sport.

The ocean is the most relaxing place in the world if you are relaxed as well. The feeling of sitting underwater with no real need to breathe, feeling the ocean holding you in it's warm embrace, watching the fish and the endless deep blue... It's peaceful and beautiful. I can't describe it to you, you would have to do it to experience it.

It's also highly addictive. I will be back for more. Chau from fifteen metres down!

Parque Tayrona

Back in Taganga after a three day sojourn through Parque Tayrona in north Colombia. Wow it was beautiful. I'll let the photos do most of the talking. The first day I spent walking to a beach called Cabo del Sol, then I spent two nights at a "hostel" there. Actually the hostel just consisted of tents and hammocks. The first night I paid for a tent, but it was so warm that the second night I just slept out under the stars on the beach. I didn't even need to buy breakfast because coconuts and mangos could be found everywhere on the ground. Really magical place.

Freediving in Taganga

It's been a little while since my last update, I am now in Colombia, staying in a small fishing village with some of the cheapest scuba diving in the world.

I am also trying my hand at some freediving while I am here. Freediving is diving without any breathing apparatus, just holding your breath. It is a hell of a lot cheaper and more convenient than scuba diving, plus you can do it anywhere.

Most people without any training or practice would struggle to hold their breath longer than about 30 seconds while sitting down on dry land, let alone while swimming underwater. This is fairly normal.  However, professional freedivers can stay under for five minutes or more even while swimming. Frankly I find that seriously inspiring, so over the last couple of days I have been practicing some freediving techniques to gain more bottom time.

For a sneaky glimpse of how tranquil it can be to drift with the fishes in the Caribean sea, watch my underwater video here. Why don't you try holding your breath along with me ;-).

Freediving is very much a mental sport. My current PBs for breath holding are 1:14 while swimming at -3m and 3:40 on dry land, but I'm certain these could be improved hugely by a little practice. I'm convinced 5:00 above water and 2:30 while swimming are easily within reach. I am going to take a two day freediving course this weekend to try and improve this.

Humans actually have a number of built in adaptations that kick in when we submerge ourselves underwater, I won't go into it here but google "mammalian diving reflex" if you are interested. The key to longer times underwater is proper mental control.

Maintaining a relaxed state is the most important thing. You have to keep your heart rate low and move very slowly and as gracefully as possible through the water. Your urge to breathe is like a little fishhook in your brain, it starts by tugging very gently and slowly progresses to a wrenching yank that pulls you almost involuntarily to the surface. Fighting it will agitate you and raise your heartrate, having an opposite from desired effect. You need to disassociate from it and chill out, man. I have had a lot of success by relaxing my mind and using calming visualisation techniques, this alone has pushed my times at depth from 30 seconds to over a minute.

I actually like freediving quite a bit more than scuba diving. Scuba is very relaxing and a really unique experience, but breath hold diving is even more tranquil somehow. I particularly like the mental discipline aspect of the sport, it's almost a form of meditation.

The underwater world here is just mindblowing and incredible. I've been trying to snap some decent underwater photos so I can share it with you, but it doesn't do it justice. And let me tell you, taking good photos underwater is horribly difficult. The light is bad, focussing takes a long time, added to the fact that fish move, you are also moving and as soon as you get in a good position your brain is SCREAMING at you for air, you've got a recipe for a real challenge. I'm pretty proud of some of the photos I've managed to snap, the best of which you can see below.

-5m

So pretty!

Pufferfish

Lionfish

Nailing the summit

Made it

As a brief aside, yesterday I went with my Swedish friend Petter to try and break into San Pedro prison. We didn't succeed but had a fun time trying.

This is probably the most nuts prison in the world, picture a place where prisoners must pay for their own cells, manufacture cocaine and run drug empires from inside. For information (and some photos) about this crazy place, see the wikipedia article. Also a famous book called "Marching Powder" was written by Rusty Young about a British inmate called Thomas Mcfadden who used to give tours of the place, it's a good read, I'd recommend it.

About a year ago the government really cracked down on tours after the BBC published an article exposing the crazy corruption inside. That didn't deter us from trying to get in. We hung outside the entrance for a while trying to figure it out, saw a lot of Bolivians coming in and out of the gates but the guards kept telling us to move on and eventually got pissed so we had to make a bit of a retreat. I started approaching people coming out of the jail and asking if they knew someone inside that could help us get in for some appropriate "compensation". Third time I figured I'd hit the jackpot, a fat shady-looking Mexican guy with a HUGE moustache said he thought he'd be able to help us, and disappeared for about ten minutes. Then he came back and after a shifty look to each side said he could do it and if we would just wait a few minutes he'd come back with a precio (cost). He talked to the guards for a loooong time and seemed to be having an argument with them, then finally he came back with a disapointed look and said it was too hard, he couldn't help us.

Not to be phased, I tried asking yet another likely suspect who had just come out of the prison, but he couldn't help. Then a taxi driver parked up next to us beckoned me over and said I needed to talk to the gobernador (governor) and offer him a little something directly. The governor's office was through a small easy to miss door on the left side of the prison block. So I went and gave it a good bang, it was opened a crack by a surly guard. I asked to see the governor but he said brusquely that he was at lunch and slammed the door in my face. Petter and I went to the markets for a while, then later I came back with a story ready. This time I told the guard we were journalists and had a meeting with the governor at 3, so sorry we were ten minutes late. This time he hesitated, looked a little worried and said with all apologies, the governor was still at lunch, perhaps we could come back later.

After this I gave up. I was fully prepared to bribe the governor to get in there but I was bored of trying at this point. Never thought I'd be putting so much effort to getting INTO prison. Would have been much easier if I'd simply got myself caught smuggling cocaine out of the country. Ah well.

So anyway, onto a little account of my adventures climbing Huaynu Potosi. Apologies, it is pretty raw because it's just typed up straight from my journal and it's more how I write to myself than to anyone else.

17/4

Driving up the rocky road to the mountain. It is dark and forbidding with patchy snow, shrouded by grey cloud. Looks like bad conditions. I hope it allows us to climb it.

At base camp at 4600m. Today we went to a glacier to practice ice climbing with crampons and picks. The air is noticeable thin here. Funny how on a mountain there is arto wind but nada air to goddamn breathe. We practiced climbing some steep slopes and then a vertical ice face with rope support. CHRIST that was exhausting, just five meters of height and my lungs were heaving and I had tunnel vision. Afterwards my arms were so cramped up I couldn't even grab my gloves properly to take them off. We returned to camp through spectacular scenery and will sleep here ready for an uphill hike to high camp tomorrow.

Just went off for a little walk on my own to look at the nearby hydroelectic dam but it is hard to walk fast up here and it was much further than it looked. Halfway there a thick mist rolled up the mountain and enveloped me completely. Despite being barely 500m from camp, I was instantly completely lost. Luckily it cleared again quickly and I was able to find my way back but it shows just how fast things can get dangerous on a mountain like this. I had to brave the icy outhouse after I got back. Shit came out like a firehose, so that's not good news for my impending climb. If I had to place the blame on something, prime suspect is definitely the burger I bought yesterday from a scummy-looking street vendor. Hot, greasy and probably contained more parasites than a starving african child. I hope it clears up before tomorrow.

18/4

So we reached rock camp (high camp at 5130masl) this morning in good time. Rock camp is a grim little stone hut perched on a rocky outcrop and surrounded by snow. The ply boards on the inside are plastered with the scramblings of climbers who previously made the summit (the guides only allow people to write who made it all the way).

It is BITTERLY cold up here. I am shivering in two pairs of trousers, thermal socks, t-shirt, two fleeces, jacket, gloves, scarf and a hat. It is 11am and there is nothing to do for the next thirteen hours until we leave for out summit push at midnight.

The hike up wasn't bad, just a little slow. We spoke to some guys on their way down from the top, most made it but two didn't. They trotted out their excuses (dizziness and sickness) but nobody could look them in the eye and I felt ashamed for them.

I will NOT be one of those guys. Quitting is simply not an option. There has never been a grain of doubt in my mind that I will reach the top, and there never will be.

19/4

Dawn from summit

So I made it to the summit obviously. I would have either managed it or died trying probably. But it turned out to be about the second toughest challenge I've ever attempted.

We left high camp at midnight. I actually managed to sleep quite a bit beforehand despite my excitement, I think that really helped. Pulled on snow shoes and crampons in the dark and left trudging up through the snow with only the light of our headlamps. The stars were out and it was beautiful.

The first couple of hours were fine, then the altitude started to make itself felt. We were walking up 45 degree or steeper snowy slopes, and for every six inches of ground made, the snow would give way and you'd slip down three.

All I was focussing on was my feet, steps and breathing. If I looked up at the unending slope ahead it would have been too demoralising so I just focussed on putting on foot in front of the other. Every step felt like I had a small child clinging to my leg, I had become one giant lung, getting enough oxygen became my entire world.

At 5am we arrived at a very high rock. I was cold and completely exhausted, but my heart lifted when I saw it because I thought we were at the top. Not so, the summit was another two hundred meters away. What stood between us and it was this ridge:

The ridge

Less than six inches of packed snow to walk on and almost vertical drops on either side of at least a hundred meters. We arrived in the dark and when we reached it, my head already swimming from altitude, I had serious doubts about whether I could make it to the summit. Our guide Mario told us at this point that if we had vertigo, we couldn't go on. I had MASSIVE vertigo. But I couldn't allow myself to give up after I'd already fought through those five hours of pain, so what came out of my mouth was "si, puedo hacerlo" (I can do it).

It took about twenty minutes to traverse the ridge, dark slopes dropping off to God knows where either side. I spent every single second with the spot of my headlamp fixed on the tiny ledge and continuously repeating to myself on a loop "focus on the ridge, this is your world, one step at a time". I made the mistake of looking over the edge a couple of times and it made me sway dizzily. The snow heaped up to the right was very fluffy and my ice pick just went right through it - it would be no help to lean or step on. This was some of the scaredest I'd ever been, we were connected by ropes but if one of us made a bad slip all the others would be dragged down with them.

Before I had been feeling woozy and lightheaded from the thin air, but I was razor sharp for every step of that final push. When I made it to the top I collapsed in a heap, utterly spent.

The summit was... tranquil. And beautiful. As dawn broke we could see lake Titicaca, La Paz and Mount Illimani. I felt like the highest thing in the world. This was the highest I'd ever been outside of an airplane. It was all over too soon though because once the sun was up, the snow started to melt and we had to get off that ridge fast.

I hated every inch of that fucking ridge on the way back. At one point my foot slipped and I was weightless and sliding for a split second before Mario yanked the rope hard and caught me.

The journey back down the mountain was... pain. I had nothing left after I reached the summit, sucking huge lungs of empty air and with burning lead weights in my leg muscles, yet now we had to trudge back through melting snow for two hours down to high camp, then a further two hours all the way to base camp at the bottom.

To be honest the descent has blurred into a mass of exhaustion and pain in my head, funny how with the summit so fixed in mind, you forget that you have to come down again. But its surprising that, no matter how far you push your body, your limit is always just a little further. Our real limit is about ten times further than where we think it is.

Right now I am unbelievably exhausted. I feel like I got beaten up by a steam roller. It hurts to breathe, stand, sit, lie, talk or move. But I fucking made it. And I wrote on the wall :-). I won't be climbing another mountain for a few weeks or months, but... I'll be back one day. And I'll be higher.

The only two words you need to master a language

You ready for this? Here they are:

TOTAL IMMERSION

 

It should be obvious to everyone that the best way to learn something is just to do it as much as possible but I am amazed at the number of people that don't seem to grasp this.

Contrary to popular belief you do not need a spectacular amount of talent, intelligence, natural ability or anything else to learn a language. If you can talk, you already learned one and you have all the qualifications you need. The hardware to learn a language is there in your brain already and has been honed by millions of years of evolution, your brain is extremely good at it. The ONLY thing you need is sufficient motivation and commitment. Learning a language is hard, check whether it's something you really want to do first.

If I were to learn Spanish again from scratch, here is how I would do it:

1. Book a ticket to Sucre, Bolivia (many other cheap South American cities would do).
2. Stay with a Bolivian family in a homestay.
3. Take four hours of grammar classes at a good school every morning (I recommend "Megusta" Spanish school in Sucre. Very personal, cheap and much better than the academy I went to in Buenos Aires). Get one-on-one classes or, perhaps better, classes with someone that is even more motivated than you are. This will push you.
4. Take up an activity, charity work, job or sport where all the other people speak Spanish all the time and can't understand English. Instead of doing this, I went out into the plaza every afternoon and spoke with random students for three or four hours at a time, but many people may not feel comfortable with this method.
5. Take a dictionary and little workbook with you everywhere and whenever you encounter a word or phrase you don't understand, write it down and then learn it later from flashcards.
6. Watch movies and read books in Spanish. Even if you can't understand most of it, it's subconsciously sinking in.
7. Most importantly, make a conscious and determined effort to distance yourself from English speakers as much as possible.
   
8. Do this for three months. Congratulations, now you are fluent.

The above will certainly cost you under $1000 a month in total and probably closer to $500. That's less than $3000 for fluency. How much does three years of studying Spanish in university cost? Hmm...

How not to do it

Many people try to learn a language like this:

1. Stay in a hostel full of people speaking their native language or English.
2. Take four hours of classes per day and do the homework.
3. Shy away from speaking Spanish outside of classes because they feel they aren't good enough, or it´s embarrassing, or too hard.

You will NEVER make significant progress with this approach because there is no incentive to learn and you will always view speaking/learning the language as something painful and difficult.

Kicking your brain into gear

Here's how it works. Your brain is extremely lazy. It will always take the easiest possible path to get its needs met. You, as a human being, have a natural drive to seek other humans for social contact. If you want to make any real progress, you need to tap into this.

Cut yourself off from native speakers. The first month will be incredibly hard. You will feel like an idiot for not understanding anything. You will feel as if you are making no progress. If you are doing it right you will feel very lonely because you have nobody to talk to properly. This is good! Subconsciously, your brain gets motivated because it knows that to fill your social needs, it has to learn the language, there is no other option.

You will go from subconsciously tuning out the language as meaningless babble, to desperately trying to decode the meaning of every single thing you read or hear. Your brain will take statistics on it and build the appropriate mental structures to decode it. This is what learning feels like. Communication and social contact is essential for humans, it is extremely difficult to survive without it. By putting yourself in the situation where the only way to achieve this is to learn a new language, your brain will fire on all cylinders until it has fixed it.

The language house

Learning a language is a little like building a house. First you need to lay the foundation. This is the initial "hump" of language learning and it sucks. You will see very little measurable progress for the first few weeks but it is an essential part of the building process. This is what happens in the beginning when your brain takes statistics on what it hears.

Second you need a scaffold to build the house around. Grammar rules are that scaffolding. Learning grammar is NOT learning the language itself, it is learning a skeleton of rules upon which to hang the language you learn. Learning grammar alongside practicing the language every day will massively accelerate your progress.

After the main structure of the house is built you can throw the scaffolding away. You don't need grammar rules when you have an intuitive grasp of how the language is constructed. At this point all that remains is interior design and embellishing, that is polishing the language and it just takes time hanging around native speakers.

You need to be motivated

Learning a language fast is difficult, embarrassing, painful and requires a phenomenal number of mistakes, which I am still making every day. You need to make NOT learning the language more painful in your mind than learning it, and the best way to do that is use your natural drive away from loneliness and towards social contact.

Cut yourself off from native speakers. Immerse yourself totally. Ten hours a day of Spanish exposure will have you dreaming and thinking in it within weeks.

Summitting Huayna Potosi

So yesterday I cycled the "Death Road", a forty-three mile road from La Paz to Coroico. It was closed three years ago to normal traffic because it was so dangerous and descends from 4650 to 1200masl (metres above sea level). It is probably one of the best mountain biking routes in the world due to spectacular scenery and the fact that it is downhill all the way. Only about 25 cyclists have died here since 1998 and several of those were because they stepped backwards too far to take a photo and fell off the edge. So unless you were an idiot you would probably be fine. At the start we biked through bitter cold and freezing mists that crept up the mountain, then this slowly gave way to humid jungle and waterfalls crashing hundreds of metres onto the road. My hands are now shattered from rocky pounding of the handlebars and my arse resembles papier mache but well worth the incredible ride.

On to a more exciting adventure, this Tuesday I will be making an expedition up the mountain Huayna Potosi.

La Paz is already the highest capital of the world at 3600masl. This is high enough for the lack of oxygen to cause altitude sickness and in fact many tourists experience this. Headaches, insomnia, nausea and shortness of breath are not uncommon. When I first arrived here I almost passed out a few times after standing up too quickly.

The medical community classes heights above 5500masl as "extreme altitude" and at 6080masl, Hyayna Potosi is a different story. At that altitude, the atmosphere is less than half the pressure than it is at sea level, giving an effective oxygen percentage of only 9%. Lack of oxygen makes breathing laboured and hard, if you are not acclimatised then altitude sickness can be deadly. Thinking becomes confused due to lack of oxygen, hallucinations can occur and have caused the deaths of many high altitude climbers. Permanent human habitation is impossible above this height, you simply start to slowly die where the air is this thin.  I have spent a month and a half at about 2000masl in Sucre and Cochabamba, and a further two weeks in total at around 3500m in Potosi, Uyuni, Tupiza and La Paz. This is not enough time for the body to acclimatise completely but I'm hoping it will be good enough.

I am leaving with a group of climbers on Tuesday to start at base camp of 4650masl. The first day will be spent practicing ice climbing a glacier with crampons and ice picks (I've never used these before, should be fun). The second day is an easy climb to the high camp at 5200masl and the final day is a gruelling 8 hour grind to the summit, starting at 1am. Of the last climbing group to leave, fifteen set out and only two made it to the top, all of the others had to turn back due to sickness, dizziness or cold.

I will be one of those guys that reaches the top. Edmund Hillary said it best:

"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."

I am hoping all the mental discipline I learned from doing crossfit will pay off here even though the physical benefits have long since disapeared (I'm a skinny beanpole now). However, I am in good enough physical shape to tackle this and the only reason I could fail is through mental weakness and giving up.

Confidence is faith in oneself. How do you develop faith in yourself? By continuously pushing yourself through incredibly difficult circumstances and realising you can handle it. I want to discover the part of myself that can handle this.

I will keep a journal for the three days and record my experiences. Stay posted.


"The stresses of high-altitude climbing reveal your true character; they unmask who you really are. You no longer have all the social graces to hide behind, to play roles. You are the essence of what you are."
-David Breashears

The mines of Potosi

I grab a filthy wooden beam above me, hauling myself up through the thick dust and murky darkness. My head swims, the altitude makes it very hard to breathe and my shirt sticks to me with sweat. The spot from my headlamp dances over the rocks just centimeters from my face, the odd mineral deposit glints seductively. A sickening crack and a jar as I smash my head on some low hanging pyrite crystals, luckily my helmet takes most of the impact and saves me from concussion.


Emerging from the almost vertical shaft, Ronald my guide urges us quickly onwards. The tunnel is wider here but still not high enough to stand, my group and I slosh forwards, waddling awkwardly in a bent over gait. My wellies slosh through a couple of inches of murky water, slipping occasionally on one of the iron rails. A low rumbling echoes through the tunnel and Ronald becomes more agitated. "Quickly quickly to the next corner!" We squeeze into a hollow and I just barely make it before two wagons and an electric cart trundle past, a dirty miner clings to the back, complete with headlamp and golfball sized wadge of coca leaves in his cheek. According to Ronald the carts don't stop for tourists, so its imperative to get out of the way fast.

This is one of the Potosi silver mines, and if Hell was a real place, this would be it. Forty-five degree heat, thick silica dust and gruelling manual labour combine to ensure that very few of the workers live to over forty years. The health and safety officer here is on permanent vacation, miners shovel ore adjacent to clattering machinery and writhing winch cables. Caveins and runaway mine carts are not uncommon.

The Spanish discovered silver here and founded the city of Potosi in 1546, and it quickly became the richest (and at 4,090m one of the highest) in South America, supplying Europe with silver for hundreds of years, but at a cost. The Spanish forced local indigenous people into slavery to perform the horrific work of hauling the ore through tunnels out of the mountain. Over the centuries, eight million miners have died here from silicosis, overwork or accidents. And while the silver is long gone, thousands of local people still perform backbreaking labour in the dark and heat to extract what little zinc and tin they can from the dead mountain.

Along a dank shaft just barely high enough to crawl through is a small cave. Here works Milton, an eighteen year old whose father died in the mines. He has worked here since he was thirteen and knows no other life, without the aid of modern machinery he spends hours chiselling a hole in the rocks to insert dynamite, hoping to knock loose a few pieces of zinc ore. He explains in Quechua that with nine siblings, he has no choice but to work here to support his family. His salary? Less than 1000 bolivianos ($140) a month.

We continue onwards, and after we emerge from the mountain to brilliant skies and piercing clear air, I realise that I will never have occasion to complain about work again.