´Brews ´N´ Views

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Buenas,

I just arrived from an easy seven hour bus ride over the altiplano at Potosi, a UNESCO world heritage city and once South America´s richest city. It is still The Worlds´Highest City and you know this to be true just by walking a tiny bit too fast, because your lungs stop functioning from the lack of oxygen. So far the city looks great but it is nightime on a friday so sightseeing starts tomorrow. I am staying at the Koala Den which granted, smacks of tourists, but is clean, warm, cheap, desayuno incuje, and in the middle of town. I am here mainly to go into the mine on Cerro Rico, or rich hill, where the silver mining industry started all those years ago, fuelled by african slaves, pushed by conquistadores, and now worked mainly for iron and zinc. Yes, touring a working mine where it is well known that workers usually die of silicosis and have no rights of protetion does present moralistic questions, but to know a place and its people you have to see what made it.

First things first: the word ´Brews´ in the title of this entry pertains to the number of Israelis in south america, which is like, maybe several million. I wasnt aware that it was just the place they all came to, like ozzies and europe or english and australia. I learned here that all israelis, boys and girls, do mandatory army service straight from school for 3 years, then when they are released they are paid a small sum of dollars which they then take straight to south america. So you see more signs in hebrew here then even in english (english is genuinely extremely scarce here) and when the customary pre pubescent boy hostel touts crowd you at the bus stations they often can be heard calling ´shalom! shalom!´´because they know how many Brews are about. Amusingly, most israelis here also take the piss out of the cliche that they are tight fisted and always driving for the best deals - because they really are and theyre good at it. One of them tells me that tons of yanks go to israel for free holidays on a ´´birthright´ tour, for jewish people who want to discover the motherland, paid for by some foundations or something. must look into this even though only my dads jewish.

I came to Potosi from Uyuni, a much smaller town with no architectural sights, but the jumping off place for the famed salt plains. I arrived thinking I would just go for a 2 day tour but after some research using the allegedly non biased Ranking Bolivia, an information office attached to a cafe whose owner collects tourists feedback on tours and creates his own ranking which he them lets you see for free so you can get your own list of the best ones on whatever criteria you prioritise, I realised 3 or 4 days was the go. I was in Uyuni with Kim, a girl from melbourne who I met in Tupiza and got the ´death train´with. We booked onto a 3 day tour for 550 bolivianos (about US70 i think) in a jeep with six others and a driver guide. Initially I didnt know what we were going to see in the tour apart from the salt plains and I didnt know what was around. We knew that it was going to be very cold the whole time as we were going to be in the bosom of the coldest part of the altiplano, so the night before we went I hit the market and bought a very fetching fleece coat and one of those peruvian style hats with the ear flaps. We stocked up on oreos and coca leaves.

Our tour friends were two israeli dudes, dori and guy, fresh from the army, an american chick called liz and her viennese boyfriend jakob, myself and kim, kims mate rowan from south africa but living in london, and our driver, Domingo. It made for a good mix of personalities and nationalities, though Dori and Guy nominated themselves class clowns and tour mascots, so they entertained the troops (and when the brakes got stuck in the wheels on the last day, they snapped into action to fix it.) These guys were proper characters, at first kind of annoying, but later I found them to be pretty nice lads and they had a lot to say and ask. The only weird thing about the group was that it was mostly people from well off families, sons of diplomats, people who owned yachts etc. And me! Actually, south america is mostly wealthy people travelling, very few people who have worked and saved and come from working class backgrounds.

First day we drove to the salt plains. They are 12,000 sq kms and the remains of a huge prehistoric inland sea, the lago minchin, at this time of year lying dry and brilliantly white. As we approached the horizon presented a view of mountains that looked like they were hovering in mid air and were all symmetrical. We realised that this was a mirage from the reflection of the salt plains, which is very trippy to look at. The flats are really stunning. The salt is 6 to 10 metres deep and when the water that covers it in the wet season dries off, it leaves the salt in endless hexagonal shapes that fix into one another, like a honeycomb. The size of the flats is maybe the size of litchemstein or something, so it is really endless and with far flung shadowed mountains stiking out in the distance, you get the perspective. We drove across the plains to Isla de pescadores, a tiny volcanic rock island populated by stands of colossal cactus, which at the top afforded spectacular views across the plains.

On the 3 days trip we also visited some lagoons nestled among towering volcanoes (a couple active), home to rare species of flamingoes, who live by filtering tiny microorganisms from the frigid salty water. We saw vicunas, a cute skinny type of camel, loads of llamas shaking their bulbous furry arses as they ran from our jeep, and my personal obsession, some weird green mosslike shrub that is rock hard and grows on rocks as though it were a skin. We passed a large area covered in petrified coral, sticking ouf of the ground like an endless stone army, all craggy and deformed, in rows and rows all pointing one way and then the other, which reminded me of the way the water or tides must have run. Whereas the landscape on the first day was almost exclusively antarctic like, with frozen salt plains and azure skies, the next couple of days took us through various landscapes from sand desert to bizarre vertical sheets of pockmarked volcanic rock, to verdant hills with evidence of farming, to steep volcanoes exhibiting their myriad minerals in maroons, whites, greens, greys and more, the most striking reflected perfectly in semi frozen lakes at their feet, themselves fringed with thick salt and hosting the most hardy of birds. On the last day, we rose at 4am to drive to some geysers with boiling mud pots and huge sulphurous plumes of smoke rising at speed from the rumbling ground, and stopped at some thermal pools for a dip (though it was far too cold so i just watched). The trip was fantastic and we even had a great soundtrack of radiohead, classic 70s rock and apt chill out music to match our often silent awe as we stared out of the window. At some points you could feel that every person in the car was thinking about the one they love as they gawped at the vistas and sort of went into their own head. I of course have tons of photos to add here soon but to appreciate the scale, the cold, the loneliness, the fact that this has been here since pretty much the beginning of time, the colours, the fauna, the feeling of being here, well you have to come here. Pictures can only give you the smallest taste. Even being in temperatures of minus 15 didnt matter to a girl who is usually cold in anything less than 26 degrees. It enhanced the experience because you could appreciate how hard life is on the altiplano, and there are people living here everyday, farming this land, with no heating, limited hot water... I think all in we travelled about 600ks or more, doing a triangular one way shape from uyuni to the salt plains, south to the border with chile, and north again past tupiza back to uyuni. Domingo did a sterling job waking us up at the crack of dawn, hauling our stuff on to the roof, and driving us all that way with not much more than a large bag of coca leaves to chew - and granted, on the last stretch he did actually momentarily fall asleep at the wheel so dori had to hold it while he woke himself up with more coca leaves - but he was a fabulous guy and we were lucky to have him. The only downer on the trip was that I eat too many oreos and got the serious squits on the last day, so the 7 hour drive back with only two toilet stops was hell. But i didnt realise that everyone else was constipated!!! and the altitude did affect some of us - we all needed to wee every half an hour which is a symptom of altitude, one of us had a splitting headache most of the time, and on our last night when we had dinner back in uyuni, liz fainted while she was chatting with me after downing a nice but very salty pizza, forgetting that we had just spent 3 days at altitude, in the freezing cold, and in a challenging environment that we had to realise our bodies were not built to cope with. I am still gasping for breath as we speak actually. Also it is so dusty there that what air you do get chokes you up.

I came to Uyuni on the ´death train´- which is about as life threatening as punch and judy so must be named by those type of tourists who want to prove how hard they are to everyone and need brands like ´worlds most dangerous road´to do so- an unchallenging 7 hour ride on a clean and warm train with toilets far more impressive that south west trains can ever dream to have. I was with Kim and our other friend Leo, an israeli bloke who was staying on to Oruro. We got on at Tupiza, the place you go mainly for horseriding into the lovely quebrada surrounding and to follow the butch cassidy and sundance kid trail, as they met their makers in san vicente, a town nearby, as the film tells. (Wathed the film in our hostel for the first time - loved it) The three of us rented horses for 5 hours and got a guide, who cant have been more than 12 years old, who led us into the quebrada on our steeds for a day of sun drenched ooing and aaghing at the landscape. We didnt do the cassidy-sundance stuff but it was cool to be in the vicinity of the legend. But on our last day there we got very lucky, thinking we were going to be bored hanging around for the evening train, we came across a small stadium where hundreds of local schoolkids seemed to be doing tryouts for some kind of cheerleading or acrobatics stuff, dancing in troups to booming sounsystems of reggaeton and a bit of the crazy frog mixed in with dance version of Can´t Fight The Moonlight. They were really good and we got to watch with the crowds of proud parents for free. After an amble round thye cool markets, we stumbled across a street procession of tiny kids dressed in traditional costumes and some conquistador type outfits with horns, dancing cutely followed by older boys playing trumpets. we were told it was a procession to celebrate them joining kindergarten.

So far Bolivia is a truly amazing place, with everything to give but the coast (its coastline was annexed by chile some years back and the goverment apparently still lodges official claims for it, but that will never happen as bolivia lost loads of land to all its neighbours by losing all its wars.) The people here are always curious about you and friendly, if a little cautious at first, and the kids always say hello. I am loving practising my spanish and having conversationsd with locals. I am also loving the bus trips, which are not as awful as they were made out to be, sure, they´re bumpy, but drivers are very careful with all those hairpin mountaintop bends and stony roads, and the views are what travelling is all about. Kim was a bit freaked by the guy carrying two white pet rats on his shoulders in front of us on the train, and someone did carry on a live chicken under his arm in the bus to tupiza, but its all fun and games and at least I have a seat - many bolivians can only get on the bus by standing the whole time. Today I enjoyed sharing my ipod with an old dude next to me who didnt know what it was so I gave him one of my earphones and played him manu chao. He loved it. ´Este es por la musica, y la musica es para mi corazon´....

x

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Comments

[MAMA]

CHICKENS AND I PODS.
Glad u r ok mel. interesting reading ! Your spanish sounds good but it would to me, as i dont speak it. nevertheless im impressed! YOU are HAVing an interesting time by the sound of it. We all love you and miss you, will be glad to see you home safe and well. all our love to you we miss you lots. xxxxxxxxxxxx