Salla

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Our first foray"into the field" was the small village of Salla, almost due east of Patacamaya as the crow (or condor) flies. After a couple of days in La Paz to acclimatize, our driver picked us up and we headed out of the canyon and onto the Altiplano. My poor head still hadn't adjusted to the altitude, but the throbbing was considerably less when all I had to do was sit and look out the window.

The wide open spaces of the Altiplano feel like they are higher than the rest of the world. I imagined that if I could get to the edge, I'd be able to peer down and see the world below me. Once we were about an hour or so south of La Paz, we could see Volcan Sajama on the horizon--Bolivia's highest peak. To the east was the Cordillera Real, with Illimani still watching over us.

Just after we turned off the main road, we started heading into the hills, towards the Cordillera Real. All of the buildings, homes and churches and stores, are made out of mud bricks. The houses are low and small, with flat roofs and walls surrounding the yards. The further into the hills we got, the more impressive the outcrops became--stony barriers and banded cliffs in a range of colours. After about an hour bumping along on the dirt road, the hills opened up and the Altiplano actually did drop off into a deep valley, with snow-capped mountains on the other side. It took what little breath the altitude leaves me with away.

Salla is a tiny village on a ridge between the valley and some badlands containing the Salla Beds, which we were there to look at. We had to wait for the men to come back from the fields (it is harvest time) to find out if we could set up camp in the school yard, so we had time to wander around. I immediately loved the ruggedness of the place-- the big sky, the big views, and the fact that even with the mountains so close, there is room for the wind to blow.

With the village's permission we set up our tents in the schoolyard, and I cooked our dinner on our little gas stove in the abandoned school house. The first night we were in Salla, the village was quiet (except for one really loud donkey) because the children were all in La Paz for school. They board there four days a week, because it is easier than getting a teacher to come here. The school room felt like it should have been a museum with what we would call old-fashioned desks, and old maps of South America on the wall.

We spent our full day here exploring the Salla Beds. In the morning, our driver drove us down a goat path, trying to get us to the bottom of the ravine. When he finally admitted he could drive no further and still be able to turn around to go back up, we got out and hiked down, so that we could walk up the gully. After a few hours exploring there, we hiked back up to the vehicle, and the driver took us back out along the dirt road past Salla and around to another road that took us through a flat land that was covered in the fields and homes of subsistence farmers. The fields are all being harvested, by hand. I've seen men and women in the fields together, with the smallest children playing nearby, and the bigger ones helping to cut and stack the wheat, or pick potatoes out of the ground.

After eating our lunch around our 4WD, we hiked up to the top of a ridge to see the Upper Salla Beds. We weren't in the right place to see the fossils these beds are known for (well, known to people who study the geology of this area, anyway), but the views were incredible. There was a valley with a village and golden fields, and off in the distance Illimani loomed even larger and clearer than the day before.

One of the really spectacular things here has been the stars--not only are they extraordinarily bright because there are no human lights around, but I could see the Big Dipper and the Southern Cross in the same sky. The Big Dipper was low on the horizon, in fact I think it's handle was shortened by the horizon. Orion was there too, lounging on his side. The stars feel so much closer here, as if the extra elevation actually makes a difference.

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Comments

[Bigboysi]

I really like your landscape photo's. Nice blog :D