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Published: July 28th 2008
Cacti and moon
Isla de Pescado (Fish Island), Salar de UyuniThe bus to the border town of La Quiaca gave me a reprise of the first half of my Humahuaca Gorge trip, and then further altiplano scenes of grazing llamas and scrubby landscape under a deep blue sky as we trundled north. The immigration buildings looked chaotic but the long queues were for people coming south, and in short order I was on the dusty streets of Villazon, the Bolivian conjoined twin of La Quiaca.
What a difference a few hundred metres makes. I could not avoid drawing parallels with many of the towns I'd passed through in last year's Southeast Asian wanderings - small shops spilling onto the streets, pavement vendors, food carts, rubbish, electricity cables in Gordian knots of complexity, small kids playing unattended, tarmac a pipe dream. And a European influence I could only discern from the fact that Spanish was spoken. The one international ATM in town was broken and I had to change some US dollars to get local currency, which I think last happened to me in Laos.
At the train station I purchased the last available seat to Uyuni in "ejecutivo" class, which turned out to be populated predominantly by Argentinian tour
groups. They were very welcoming to the foreigner in their midst, with the 20 year age difference and gaping chasm in Spanish-speaking ability no barrier to conversations that no doubt enlightened me more than them.
The train was exceedingly punctual, with departure and arrival times exactly as described in the timetable. Though I suppose taking over 8 hours to cover about 250km does give opportunities for a quick burst of acceleration to make up for any potential lateness. The landscape was bleak, and small children waved wonderingly at us as we cruised through the occasional settlement. Dust drifted into the carriage from loose window fittings, a fact I was aware of every time I licked my lips. My glasses needed wiping every 5 minutes. Once night had fallen the temperature did too, and I was not desperately sad when we pulled into Uyuni just before midnight, and I was able to disembark with the other dirty backpackers, find a hotel with a subzero room, and crawl into painfully cold sheets under several layers of llama wool blankets. Once my body heat had created a toasty McCabe-shaped patch in the bed, I drifted into sleep.
It was damned cold
Dead cactus
Isla de Pescado (Fish Island), Salar de Uyuni in the morning, as testified to by my steaming breath, and I eyed the shower in my bathroom with suspicion. I'd not read many positive things about the average Bolivian hot water system - a contraption attached to the shower head that electrically heats the flow, requiring a balancing act between the volume coming through and its temperature, with one or the other having to be compromised. So I was pleasantly surprised to find a medium that was indeed happy.
For the first time in a while, my laptop gave the doleful message indicating that the collapse of civilisation was nigh - no wireless networks in range.
While queuing at an ATM, I bumped into the guy who'd been on my Humahuaca Gorge tour, and he recommended a good one-day trip to the Salar de Uyuni, the salt flats that were the purpose of me coming here. I bagged the last seat they had available that day, then roamed the streets until departure time, noting a backpacker density approaching Khao San Road levels.
With tours to the Salar de Uyuni being such a popular activity, I was expecting a "pile 'em high" mentality from the tour operator,
**** ***** in its natural habitat
Salar de Uyuni
Have I just given the game away? but we had a comfortable Landcruiser with only 7 paying customers. The driver seemed slow and conservative compared with some of the others who passed us, but no-one was complaining about this by the end of the day.
Our first stop was at a village containing a salt-processing plant, where we browsed a small market offering a variety of goods manufactured from the salt. I bought a couple of **** *****s (words concealed, as a person who will be receiving one of these items may well be reading this), and idly wondered whether the shot glasses were the equivalent of the proverbial chocolate teapot.
Next we headed into the salt flats themselves. The Salar de Uyuni is by far the world's largest, being larger than Cyprus, and provides an astonishing spectacle. With the brilliant white expanse stretching into the distance, snow-speckled mountains marking the horizon, and an unforgiving sun staring out of a cloudless sky, it's not a place for cameras lacking a polarising filter. After brief stops at a field of salt mounds (which allow the salt to dry) and a hotel constructed of salt (closed down due to ecological damage caused by its sanitation), it was
clear just how busy this inhospitable terrain was, with each of the stops resembling a Toyota dealer's forecourt, and traffic on the few "roads" frequent. Many of the 4WDs were loaded down with supplies for 3 or 4 days out in the wilderness, and the thought of camping in subzero temperatures earned them my respect.
Our final stop was at Isla de Pescado (Fish Island), an incongruous rocky oasis in the salt flats that is covered in giant cacti, some several hundred years old. Lunch contained meat, veg and fruit, a rare trio in South America.
The salt flats are sufficiently level and bare that the lack of perspective lends itself to "amusing" photos, of which Travelblog has more than its fair share. I feel these fall into the category of "Things the world needs no more of", like Harry Potter books, so I restrained myself from setting up a shot of me crawling into a **** *****'s bum.
Near the start of our day, we'd passed a small memorial to those unfortunate souls who had died at that spot in May this year when two 4WDs collided, killing 12. Sadly, on our way back to Uyuni
we passed a scene where no doubt a similar memorial will be constructed in the near future. Our driver had told us there'd been an accident a couple of hours earlier and, as we retraced our route from the morning, a gathering crystallised out of the haze ahead. A 4WD had flipped, black tire marks leading to an ugly splash of camping gear, broken glass, and mangled metal across the white surface. The vehicle itself was on its side, wheels at an unnatural angle, and three bodies lay nearby - still, alone, and dead. (I later learned that a fourth person had died.) A crowd surrounded the injured. It seemed that it was most likely an inexperienced driver whose wheels had caught in the channels that cross some parts of the surface - his struggles to free the 4WD may have been what caused it to flip. No-one spoke the rest of the way back. In such selfish moments, life never seems more precious.
The following morning, I woke early and took a stroll around the sparsely populated streets. An old woman foraged in a rubbish heap, competing with a pack of dogs. The ATM had run out of
money, a fact I only realised after receiving "Your request can not be serviced at this time" messages for the ever-decreasing amounts I punched into the keypad until I was down to zero. A lone jogger defied the low temperatures in a T-shirt and shorts, gasping for breath in the thin air. The Ferris wheel - my current statistics indicate that every Bolivian town has one - stood stationary. The menu in my breakfast cafe contained "Male Itch", a dodgy (?) translation of the classic Bolivian dish pique a lo macho, but I opted for the aroma and fat of a bacon sandwich instead. I took a bus out mid-morning, the sum total of all the things I've ever seen, heard, touched, smelled, and tasted in this life still, thankfully, increasing.
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Gunga
Carolyn Taylor
Great shots
Hi Jabe, I visited Humahuaca in 1989. Our small tour bus had its windshield smashed by rocks kicked up from the road surface. It was a harrowing trip back to Salta, Arg. in the dark. Did you get to Tiwanaku in Bolivia? Are you heading for Cusco, Peru? Did you decide to get Pilar's apt.? Are you adjusting to the cold? Carolyn ( blogger name'gunga')