Endless Salt
Bolivia. Our bus pulled into town about 6 days ago. The roads are rock and dirt, as only 4% in the entire nation are paved. There is dust everywhere. It is hard to breathe, as pretty much everywhere you'd care to go is above the 3,000 meters above sea level. There are no waiting taxis, no speedy computer labs, no ATMs. It is a sunday, so the only bank in town and thus the only way of sourcing precious precious Bolivianos is closed. We wandered the streets finding first accomodation then tour companies to check out what's around. We found a very nice lady who runs 4 day 4x4 trips out to see the terrain all around the desolate southwest. We booked, hoping that we could A) source money with the sexy sounding "cash advance" on our debit cards (less of an advance than a withdrawl, like an ATM but using Bank Employees instead of the familiar computer screen) and B) Our operator could find another few people to make it past the 'worth running' threshold. Both these came to pass, and on the tuesday we took a long walk out of town, past the barricade (the town was technically under transport blockade due to "Politics". One doesn't like to pry, in Bolivia.) and into our waiting jeeps. The cars travelled in pairs, which as we found out was to provide a buddy system for the numerious breakdowns, flat batteries and tyres, overheading and frozen engines and general on-the-go maintenaince required when you are traversing 8 hours a day in a place as rocky as a Sly Stallone boxing movie, with air thinner than my hair at the fringe and with a 40-50 degree night to day disparity.
Luckily for us, the other half of our car was another australian pair who were very personable and in the other car was a complete set of Canadians: father, mother, son and daughter. We quickly became fast friends in our slender meal, breakdown and banyo breaks. The first day we saw Llamas. For some reason beyond my (formidable) imagination, the Llamas here (without exception) all wear little colorful tassles on the tops of their ears which render them instantly from slightly adorable to impossibly cute. They are all different colors although red is a popular theme, and some of the more accessory focused dromedaries even strech to wearing matching ribbons and necklaces. I even saw one (I swear to God) wearing a bumbag around it's wooly neck. You know. To carry it's camera and loose change. The Llama. Bumbag. Wearing.
The terrain we passed over the next few days was definetly pushing the boundries in terms of creating a livible environment for humans. We puffed and panted and shivered and burned in the lofty deserts and badlands, taking photos and toiletbreaks at upwards of 5,000m above the sea. We passed bubbling sulfuric crockpots of volcanic origin which make even the distant metal "be careful of the geysers" signpost scaldingly hot, thus it (as a warning sign) was both very effective and possessing of an BURNING IRONY from which my hand is still recovering. We have seen dried lakebeds, snowcapped mountains, Salividor Dali-esque stone creations of nonsense erosion sitting nonchalauntly on otherwise perfectly bare sand dunes, daring you, double daring you to try to ask the driver in my broken and slurred spanish how the hell they got there. At this altitude it seems like the natural forces which normally shape a consistent and cohesive environment suffer from a 'anything goes' attitude and drunkenly pair snow with desert, rocky labrynths with flat, undriven sand and half dried mineral lakes caked with god-knows-what (but it smells from time to time like soap, then in other spots of freshly combusted gunpowder) with a rich and thriving population of.. (and here the altitude-drunk nature stumbles over to the animal spinning-wheel and gives it a heafty turn, eventually landing on .. ) giant red Flamingos. It's absurd but also quietly wonderful.
We stopped for lunch one day a few k's from a large and suspiciously cone-shaped mountain, which had a VERY suspicious plume of smoke rising out of in thick bursts and emmitting a FUH-KING suspicious series of seismic booms like the heatbeat of the Earth's angry molten core. I looked back to see of the drivers were worried by this obviously active (let's face facts here) volcano we were parked within magma-shot of but they seemed absorbed in the business of taking apart on of the brake pads on my jeep to find out what the rattle was, and I didn't wish to interfere in them getting our only source of transport "get-the-dodge-out-of-here" ready, should the whole thing go thermo-nuclear and quick withdrawl become advisory.
At the end of the third day we parked at the edge (the bank?) of the largest salt flat on earth, with as many kilometers square as the planet is wide. The hotel was called a salt hotel. This wasn't because it was near the salt flats. It was because the whole thing, from loadbearing walls to light fittings was made of the same translucent crystal as the lake it bordered. The whole thing was made of Salt. Before sunrise the next day we left our white, saline abode and sped at top speed across the flats. In the middle of this lifeless lake, there rised an 'island', where cactus and birds and tourists coexist and from where you can get a panorama of the whole salty plane. In every direstion, slightly off-white fields (perfectly level, perfectly hard, given texture only by the hexagonal trays of raised salt borders the size of trashcan lids the salt coalesced into right before drying) go on and on, an ocean of the stuff. What blew my mind a little harder was when we stopped an hour further west and inspected small holes which something had punctured through the surface. After about 3 inches (yes I think in inches, as well as meters) of salt there lay a coral reef of icy cold water and actual rock-hard cubic crystals. We were driving not on a desert, but a heavily armored lake.
Our guides dropped us off in another dusty bordertown, which had just a few k's down the tracks a cemetary for old locomotives my 5 year-old-self would have wet himself (and anyone standing in his way) over. Possibly the greatest playground the world has ever witnessed, so long as you have a good sense of balance and an up-to-date tetanus immunisation. Obviously, the rest of the day was a write off, letting my aformentioned younger incarnation have his gleeful way with the derilict choo-choos.
We left the next day, pausing only for snacks and ticket mix-ups in Potosi (which (by the way) is the highest city on earth) and on to Sucre which is as far as I can tell the heart, but no longer official capital, of Bolivia. The air here is still thin but no longer giving us panting attacks or headaches. They do say chewing coco leaves is a good remedy for altitude sensitivity which is kinda true for me, it doesn't make my lungs feel better but it gives me a fair whack of a caffeine ascent (as an ex-nightshift worker I recognise the sweet kiss of caffiene when I feel it) that you simply don't mind and everything feels good, man. Photos to come when we find an internet cafe whose speed doesn't feel like the server is a series of old women passing the datapackets in an arthritic game of chinese whispers.
In short, I am in Bolivia and am still alive.
Luckily for us, the other half of our car was another australian pair who were very personable and in the other car was a complete set of Canadians: father, mother, son and daughter. We quickly became fast friends in our slender meal, breakdown and banyo breaks. The first day we saw Llamas. For some reason beyond my (formidable) imagination, the Llamas here (without exception) all wear little colorful tassles on the tops of their ears which render them instantly from slightly adorable to impossibly cute. They are all different colors although red is a popular theme, and some of the more accessory focused dromedaries even strech to wearing matching ribbons and necklaces. I even saw one (I swear to God) wearing a bumbag around it's wooly neck. You know. To carry it's camera and loose change. The Llama. Bumbag. Wearing.
The terrain we passed over the next few days was definetly pushing the boundries in terms of creating a livible environment for humans. We puffed and panted and shivered and burned in the lofty deserts and badlands, taking photos and toiletbreaks at upwards of 5,000m above the sea. We passed bubbling sulfuric crockpots of volcanic origin which make even the distant metal "be careful of the geysers" signpost scaldingly hot, thus it (as a warning sign) was both very effective and possessing of an BURNING IRONY from which my hand is still recovering. We have seen dried lakebeds, snowcapped mountains, Salividor Dali-esque stone creations of nonsense erosion sitting nonchalauntly on otherwise perfectly bare sand dunes, daring you, double daring you to try to ask the driver in my broken and slurred spanish how the hell they got there. At this altitude it seems like the natural forces which normally shape a consistent and cohesive environment suffer from a 'anything goes' attitude and drunkenly pair snow with desert, rocky labrynths with flat, undriven sand and half dried mineral lakes caked with god-knows-what (but it smells from time to time like soap, then in other spots of freshly combusted gunpowder) with a rich and thriving population of.. (and here the altitude-drunk nature stumbles over to the animal spinning-wheel and gives it a heafty turn, eventually landing on .. ) giant red Flamingos. It's absurd but also quietly wonderful.
We stopped for lunch one day a few k's from a large and suspiciously cone-shaped mountain, which had a VERY suspicious plume of smoke rising out of in thick bursts and emmitting a FUH-KING suspicious series of seismic booms like the heatbeat of the Earth's angry molten core. I looked back to see of the drivers were worried by this obviously active (let's face facts here) volcano we were parked within magma-shot of but they seemed absorbed in the business of taking apart on of the brake pads on my jeep to find out what the rattle was, and I didn't wish to interfere in them getting our only source of transport "get-the-dodge-out-of-here" ready, should the whole thing go thermo-nuclear and quick withdrawl become advisory.
At the end of the third day we parked at the edge (the bank?) of the largest salt flat on earth, with as many kilometers square as the planet is wide. The hotel was called a salt hotel. This wasn't because it was near the salt flats. It was because the whole thing, from loadbearing walls to light fittings was made of the same translucent crystal as the lake it bordered. The whole thing was made of Salt. Before sunrise the next day we left our white, saline abode and sped at top speed across the flats. In the middle of this lifeless lake, there rised an 'island', where cactus and birds and tourists coexist and from where you can get a panorama of the whole salty plane. In every direstion, slightly off-white fields (perfectly level, perfectly hard, given texture only by the hexagonal trays of raised salt borders the size of trashcan lids the salt coalesced into right before drying) go on and on, an ocean of the stuff. What blew my mind a little harder was when we stopped an hour further west and inspected small holes which something had punctured through the surface. After about 3 inches (yes I think in inches, as well as meters) of salt there lay a coral reef of icy cold water and actual rock-hard cubic crystals. We were driving not on a desert, but a heavily armored lake.
Our guides dropped us off in another dusty bordertown, which had just a few k's down the tracks a cemetary for old locomotives my 5 year-old-self would have wet himself (and anyone standing in his way) over. Possibly the greatest playground the world has ever witnessed, so long as you have a good sense of balance and an up-to-date tetanus immunisation. Obviously, the rest of the day was a write off, letting my aformentioned younger incarnation have his gleeful way with the derilict choo-choos.
We left the next day, pausing only for snacks and ticket mix-ups in Potosi (which (by the way) is the highest city on earth) and on to Sucre which is as far as I can tell the heart, but no longer official capital, of Bolivia. The air here is still thin but no longer giving us panting attacks or headaches. They do say chewing coco leaves is a good remedy for altitude sensitivity which is kinda true for me, it doesn't make my lungs feel better but it gives me a fair whack of a caffeine ascent (as an ex-nightshift worker I recognise the sweet kiss of caffiene when I feel it) that you simply don't mind and everything feels good, man. Photos to come when we find an internet cafe whose speed doesn't feel like the server is a series of old women passing the datapackets in an arthritic game of chinese whispers.
In short, I am in Bolivia and am still alive.