Our guide had mentioned throughout the several hour tour that she hoped we wouldn't get caught up in any 'traffic jams'. Well, just when we thought we had made it out safely, we got caught in a massive 'pile-up' at the doors to the elevators. (Apparently the workers and miners get priority over us lowly tourists, and we are all using the same elevator) Waited here for an extra 30 minutes or so, bored enough that people in our group were making shadow puppets on the walls and doors.
The elevators themselves were quite an experience. A four-level elevator (a total of 36 people, 9 per level, on the single elevator) so tightly cramped that it has nine people stuffed into little spaces big enough to comfortably fit two or three. Only two of the four cars can load at a time, so we climbed up the little ladder, packed in shoulder to shoulder, then were raised up several meters into the pitch-black shaft so they could load the bottom two cars of the elevator. Unfortunately one of the women we were packed in with had a minor claustrophobia, so she kept saying she couldn't do it. Once the elevator started racing up, she was asking out loud, "How long is this going to take?!?" To which I reassuringly replied, "I think we are going down!"
Yeah, I'm kind of like that...
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