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Published: April 28th 2007
The story of cycling the Bolivian Altiplano
Dust and getting out of the way of motorised vehicles Crossing into Villazon (Bolivia) from La Quiaca (Argentina) is so laid back that Claire missed it, wheeling her bike past passport control and a man in a green uniform lounging against a lamp post, and into the main trading street of Villazon. Despite the uniformed official's lacked of interest, Claire decided to turn back to indulge in her share of border bureaucracy. Even though words in capital letters at the top of our entry forms were blunt about the need to answer all 22 questions, no-one bothered to check the forms or the information on them against our passports. A young man — surely he was no older than 16? — stamped us through for 30 days, even though we had asked for 90. The young man shrugged.
Bienvenidos a Bolivia, amigos.
South-western Bolivia is where most of the Indigenous Bolivians, the Quechua and Aymará peoples, live. Most of them grind out subsistence lives from the age-old crops of maize, potatoes and quÃnoa, and the meat and wool of llamas. The Aymara, who number about 2.3 million, have lived in the Andes and Altiplano regions of Bolivia, Peru, northern Chile and north-eastern Argentina for at least 2,000 years.
Shade stop at Mojo
The children all came out of school to inspect the weird foreigners from the safety of the schoolyard fence They became subjects of the expanionist Incas in the 15th century, and, little more than a century after that, by the equally expanionist Spanish.
The Quechua people are related to the Aymará. It seems that Quechua culture existed before the rise of the Incas, and that their language spread along the Andes as a trade language, eventually being adopted by the Incas as their official tongue. There are about 2.5 million Quechuas today, and another 7 million or so who speak Quechua, in south-western Bolivia, north-western Argentina, northern Chile, Peru, Ecuador, southern Colombia. It is said to be the most widely spoken of the languages of Indigenous peoples in the Americas.
The current president of Bolivia, Juan Evo Morales Ayma, is Aymará, from Orinoca in the department (state) of Oruro, one of the two departments we have been travelling in since arriving in Bolivia. He is the first Indigenous head of state since the Spanish Conquest more than 470 years ago; he may well be the first campesino (peasant) to become president, too. In many of the small villages we passed through, shop walls were decorated with posters of Evo, as he is known. When he appeared on
Graveyard
Brightly decorated graves are common in this part of the world. This cemetry was at a crossroads between Villazon and Tupiza, and there was no village nearby. TV, old timers and the young alike would turn to us and say, approvingly (with concessions to our skill in Spanish), "Evo. Campesino."
Morales is the leader of the political party Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement for Socialism), the acronym for which is a play on the Spanish word "mas", which means "more". Evo is also the leader of Bolivia's
cocalero movement, a federation of coca leaf-growing campesinos who resist the US government's program to eradicate the growing of coca. There seems to be some confusion, in the US at least, about coca growing. On the one hand there is that which is grown for the manufacture of cocaine, which Morales has denied being involved in. On the other is a peasant tradition that goes back thousands of years. As then, now campesinos, most of whom live in poverty, chew the leaf to help deal with the effects of altitude, and to ward off hunger and cold. We saw huge bags of coca for sale in the streets of Villazon, as we did in other towns as we travelled north.
Villazon is a smuggling town chock full of the sorts of goods — electronics from the latest mobile phones
Red-rock gorge country
This quebrada near Tupiza is typical of the gorges in the area. The road is in the riverbed. to TVs, jeans, socks, pharmaceuticals that would be available only by prescription at home — that are only dreamed about 200 metres away across the border. Along the streets, women stand at shaded handcarts and offer for sale orange juice that they squeeze on the spot using a mechanical press that looks as though its straight out of a 1950s kitchen.
We watched an ant trail of campesinos (peasants) lug on their backs, sometimes at a knee-wrecking jog, 50kg sacks of flour from Argentina to a truck freight depot on the Bolivian side. Some of them were old, and looked as though they should be singing nursery rhymes to their great-grandchildren. In the west, they probably would be. It was cruel looking work. This was our first glimpse of poverty that besets many Bolivians on a scale that is much more desperate than anything we saw day to day in Chile or Argentina.
We stayed in Villazon overnight, long enough to find our feet and to learn that we couldn't buy the road map we wanted. This meant heading north and hoping for the best. Luckily, there are few major roads, so the risk of our getting lost,
Get a grip!
A cactus clings to life on top of a 30m tall rock pillar in a quebrada near Tupiza despite the lack of road signs, was not high. We headed off along the eastern edge of the Altiplano for the 91km ride to Tupiza. This short hop gave us experience of everything cycling in the Bolivian Altiplano is about: dust, hills, trees only in the occasional protected hollow, altitude, sunstroke, arresting scenery, having to hit the side of the road as a truck or bus, horn blaring, roared past. (Getting off the road quickly is more difficult than it sounds: the bike is laden and has dirt-gripping off-road tyres, the verges are soft and stony.) The drivers of the long-distance buses (again!) seem to be the worst; in contrast, the local buses are too clapped out to get up much speed, and the drivers seem more relaxed and would often toot, grin and wave as they passed us. We discovered very quickly — about 3km out of Villazon — that it is impossible to ride uphill, even on a gentle gradient, when a vehicle passes us on a dirt road, as there isn't enough oxygen in the dust-thick air to breathe. Campesinos who live along the dirt roads have dust blown over them throughout the day, for months on
Rio San Juan del Oro
Wending its way through purple rock at Quebrada Seca (Dry Gorge) near Tupiza end, and we wonder if they develop chronic eye and lung problems.
Dave spotted a couple of wild guinea pigs crossing the road. Remolinas (willy willies) flitted across the landscape, sometimes wrapping us in dust.
In respite from the dust of the road, we camped overnight on the bank of the Rio San Juan del Oro among trees and tall grasses. As there was still water in the river, we could enjoy a quick, cold bath to rinse off the sweat, sunscreen and dust of the day. This and our setting up camp entertained a local campesino, who smiled as he watched us over the top of his hoe and while he tended his two donkeys. He went home on dark, and we stood in the open and watched the stars. At this altitude they are so clear and close you feel as though you can almost touch them. Whenever we camp, Claire likes to pick out the Southern Cross and Orion, constellations she has watched since she was a child.
From the river, the countryside became hillier, and the dust more powdery and deeper. As our position in relation to the hills and spurs around us
Fredy
All smiles in his Limp Bizkit cap changed, small valleys, each with a village tucked among fields of maize on the valley floor, were revealed and then hidden again. It was like being let in on a secret: we'd look behind and see only arid steep hillsides interleaved, seemingly impenetrable.
About 12km south of Tupiza we came into the magnificent red-rock gorge country that the area is famous for. It was a nice surprise riding into such arresting scenery, and as we slipped between ruddy red towers of soft rock we were well aware of the insignificance of individual human lives. In the long dry season (roughly, March-April to November), when the streams through these gorges have dried up, the riverbeds become roads. Sometimes, as we discovered ourselves, they provide a better surface than the made road.
By the time we arrived in Tupiza we were sunstruck for the third time in 10 days, such is the heat on the Altiplano. We swapped two wheels for four, and took off across the Altiplano to the remote south-western Bolivia of the Cordillera de LÃpez and the Cordillera de los Andes, and the Salar de Uyuni in a 4WD. We shared four days with Fredy HuayllanÃ, the
El Sillar
From a narrow ridge separating two valleys eroded by rain and wind, near Tupiza driver and sometime cook, and Irishwoman Fiona and another Australian Dave. Fredy is a Quechua who lives with his family, quÃnoa farmers, at the south of the Salar de Uyuni. He is a careful driver (a rare thing in Bolivia!) and informative guide. His off-farm income must provide a fairly good second livelihood for the family, although Fredy says he works most days of the year and therefore sees little of them. We suspect he enjoys his freedom from the fields.
It was strange to be sitting in a vehicle watching the scenery go by, chatting, and not getting out of breath. By the end of the first day, we were glad we had decided against trying to ride this remote part of the country: we gained and lost altitude steeply and often, villages were more than a day's ride apart, and there was precious little water available. We have certainly heard of cyclists who have done it, and we dips our lids to 'em, for they are made of hardier stuff than us. All around us were household- or collective-run mines, for the area is rich in gold, silver and copper. Fredy told us that Bolivia can't afford
large-scale mineral exploration, and campesinos dig what they can from small claims. The landscape was changable: all of it was magnificent, and all far too big for the camera. Fredy tells us when we are at 4,500m above sea level, adding that the next day we will reach the highest point of our tour, 5,000m. He laughed when we answer his question about the highest point of Australia — 2,228m — and was amazed when we said that some of inland Australia lies below sea level.
On the first night, we slept on mattresses made from sacks of plastic hessian stitched together. (The ceiling was of the same material.) This would be a common bedding for us over the next few weeks.
Fredy took us through the painted landscapes of the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa (REA), a huge national park that encompasses all of south-west Bolivia and was established to protect remaining populations of the vicuña, a wild relative of the llama and alpaca, and the llareta, a tough plant that looks like moss. Funnily, the park is named after a Bolivian hero of the War of the Pacific, 1879-1883, in which Bolivia lost its
Mining borax
Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa sea access to Chile and Peru. He was an engineer who worked in a silver mine. Commercial activity is allowed in the park. At several of the white-crusted lakes and pans, people mine borax and calcium carbonate. Some of the mountains looked as though a painter had loaded a palette knife with stripes of earthy colours and swirled them across a canvas. Desierto de Dali looks for all the world like a work of the painter (without the melting clock). Lakes are gem coloured: turquoise, sapphire, emerald, red. Many are crusted with poisonous chemical colours of sulphur, orange and white. Several of them provide breeding and feeding grounds for three species of flamingos, the Chilean, the Andean and the James. It is strange, in the middle of this desert world, to see snow on mountian tops.
As we approached the Salar de Uyuni we came into a quÃnoa-growing area. Plants are thinly spread, as there is little nutrient in the sand, Fredy says, and the only water they get is from the rains between December and February. It is being harvested now, and we stop so Fredy can show it to us. Claire laughs at the way he takes
Painted landscape
Typical scene from the national park protecting all of south-west Bolivia a small palmful of grains from a plant, cups them in one palm and, with the heel of his other hand, grinds them to separate seed from husk. The way he does this, and even the way he stands while doing so, his weight on one leg, is exactly the way Claire's father used to gauge the ripeness of wheat and barley during her farming childhood. Two men 2 generations and a world apart, and the same behaviour. The harvesting method is very different. Here, campesinos reap the quÃnoa with sickles. The cut stalks are gathered together, and threshed either by foot (the grain is stomped on) or by being driven over by a truck. The grain seems to be winnowed with the aid of large seives, mostly by hand although sometimes with the help of a tractor engine, and bagged on site.
We were up on our last day of the 4WD tour while the stars were still bright in the sky, so we could enjoy the sun rising over the Salar de Uyuni, which many locals call the Salar de Tunupa after the volcano on its northern edge that dominates the landscape here. The salar, the largest
Laguna Verde and Volcán Licancabur
The colour of the lagoon derives in part from the concoction of chemicals it contains: lead, sulphur and arsenic. Anyone for a swim? salt flat in the world, is about 12,000km². It lies at 3,660m ASL. Fredy said that it takes three hours to drive across the salt pan. He related the story of a mate who went to sleep while crossing it one night. He was woken an hour later after his truck had got bogged in a soft, wet area, and had spun its wheels so deeply into the salt that it took a week to dig it out. Well, it's a good story! We are told that the Salar de Uyuni was part of a huge lake 40,000 years ago. About 25,000 years ago, the water dried up, leaving an estimated 10 thousand million tonnes of salt behind. We stopped at Isla Inkahuasi, near the middle of the salar, for breakfast. This rock outcrop seems to be encrusted with what looks like dead coral, and we wondered if coral flourished in the lake once.The salar is a surreal landscape: a radiating white that, on the horizon, gives way to the blue of distance mountains, and the more definite blue of the sky. At its eastern edge, the villagers of Colchani mine the salt. It looks like dreadful work. They are
in the sun and that intense reflected heat all day, forming conical mounds of salt with shovels. They are wrapped against the light with hats, sunglasses and bandannas covering their faces, and legs and arms covered. We wonder what long-term contact with the salt does to their skin. Many of them are poor. In the nearby town of Uyuni, an expat collects sunglasses tourists no longer want to give to the salt workers.
Witnessing this work was a sobering end to our tour. From Uyuni we took the bus back to Tupiza to collect our bikes. The salar was so fascinating we decided to cycle across it, so we trundled down to the train station to go back to Uyuni. It was much easier than we had anticipated: the luggage handlers hauled the bikes into the freight wagon with the panniers still on them. The young man looking after the luggage shly asked us for 5 bolivianos (less than $1 AUD) to look after the bikes properly. He looked so uncertain that he probably would have accepted no for an answer, but we couldn't refuse him. He waved cheerily to us as the train pulled out of the station,
Lava at 5,000m
Volcanic action at Sol de Mañana. Geothermal and volcanic activity have created the multi-coloured, mineral-rich landscapes of south-west Bolivia. and we were on our way back to Uyuni, to continue under our own steam.
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Pat & Pete
non-member comment
Sounds even drier than Aus.
As always we look forward to your blog and this one I think was one of the best. I've just asked for a second cup of tea to quench my thirst!