High and Dry (Part 2)


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Published: September 17th 2008
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The alarm on my cell phone is going off and I futilely bat my hand at the empty air trying to find it. I force myself into consciousness enough to remember that I'm on the top bunk and that the phone is tucked into a pocket of my pack at the foot of the bottom bunk.

I scramble my way to the foot of the bed and hop down to the floor. I rip the phone from the pocket and cancel the alarm as quickly as possible. I'm sharing this relatively small hostel room with five girls, and I hope I haven't woken any of them. I stand in the darkness for a moment and listen to breathing patterns. The Polish girl sleeping next to the door sniffs, rolls over, and cracks her toes. Awake. That's ok. She's cool. The rest seem to be asleep.

I gather up my towel, clothes, and shower stuff and head out the door into the central courtyard. It is a large square with tables, chairs, and hammocks. The two shared bathrooms are across the way in a small separate building.

Halfway across the courtyard, I walk into one of the chairs, hiss one of George Carlin's seven forbidden words in one language or another, and stop to reflect.

I have to be ready to go at six, and I've given myself an hour to get ready. But even for 5am it seems too dark.

I look up. The elevation here is only about 2,400 meters, but the desert air is extremely dry and the light pollution is near zero. I see a swath of the milky way arcing across the black sky. An impossible array of stars, nebulae, and quasars fill every corner of the heavens.

The beauty of it catches me off guard, but it also irritates me. I shouldn't be able to see so much at 5:15 in the morning. Keeping my eyes raised to the firmament, I lift my left arm up to look at my watch. The glowing hands and tick marks stand out against the backdrop of the cosmos and outline a new green constellation just east of Orion's belt.

It's 2:30.

I drop my arm back to my side and contemplate the universe above me for another minute. I then turn around and shuffle back into the room. I can hear the Motorola phone snickering and giggling in its pocket as I crawl back up the bunk and under the covers.

I lay sleepless until dawn and contemplate all the Geneva Convention violations I'm going to commit against the Motorola before finally putting it to death with a hammer. This isn't the first time its internal clock has randomly reset itself. It had better be the last.

When 5:30 really does arrive, I slide out of bed and run through the shower. I return to the room, grab my day pack, and step back out into the courtyard.

Cornwall is sitting at one of the little tables getting his stuff ready.

"Good morning!", cheerful as ever.
"Morning," I grumble.

The van pulls up a few minutes after six, and we're pleased to see that Oscar will be our guide again. This time the driver is a short man in his mid-fifties named Tirso.

We pick up the Swiss couple from their hostel along with a new German girl, and we head out of San Pedro.

The first stop is the Salar de Atacama where there is a Flamingo reserve. It is small, but it is beautiful just after sunrise. This is the colder part of the year, so there aren't very many flamingos bathing and feeding in the lagoons. But this place is pristine and peaceful. The only sound is of the flamingos. We walk around for half an hour or so to enjoy it.

We return to the front of the reserve, where Tirso has laid out a breakfast of bread, ham, cheese, and sliced cake and Panitone (oddly enough in September) with coffee and tea. We gobble it up and chat.

The next stop is the lagoons of the Altiplano. This is a high plain that straddles Chile and Bolivia. About ten minutes before reaching our stopping point, I start grinning for no apparent reason.

"What?", asks Cornwall.
"I don't know," I laugh. I feel giddy and a little drunk "What's the altitude here, Oscar?"

Oscar presses a few buttons on the side of his bulky, high-tech sports watch, "A little over 4,600 meters."

Great. The altitude is turning me into a blithering idiot. I breathe deeply for a minute and try not to let it be interrupted by the moronic giggling that crops up for no reason.

It is snowing a little here. The previously clear sky is gray and the ground is covered in a thin layer of white. The national park that contains the lagoons is fronted by a small house. The house is inhabited by a small family and doubles as tourist information and collection of the entrance fees on behalf of the government.

We set off walking around the area for about an hour. The lagoons are large, crystal-clear shapes nestled at the base of Andean hills. The van meets us at the banks of one of the larger lagoons and Tirso pours out cups of coffee. We stand and drink our coffee while enjoying the view.

By now, Cornwall and I are engaged in an ongoing conversation discussing classic and newer British comedy. He has taken it upon himself to educate me on all the various shows, performers, and movies that have had bad luck making it across the Atlantic, and is compiling a lengthy list which he intends on emailing to me. "You never saw Blackadder?! That goes on The List!"

It turns out that we are both leaving for Bolivia tomorrow morning. We're using different agencies, but my prior research suggests that they all take the exact same routes, make the same stops, and take the same amount of time. There is even a chance that we'll end up in the same vehicle if one agency or the other was not able to find enough passengers to maintain profitability. They all have agreements with each other.

Once the coffee is done and the cold starts to make its way into our bones, we pile back into the van and start descending from the massive plain.

An hour later and we are in a small village where the oxygen levels are a bit higher and the sky is much bluer. We stop in a small restaurant to have lunch. The lady who runs the place serves vegetable soup, and roasted llama smothered in a reddish sauce that reminds me quite a bit of Salisbury sauce. Tirso, the driver, sits next to me and we talk about Chile. He is from the South, and begins to describe various places I should go. I tell him about Antofagasta and the Jaiba crab I ate. He beams and goes on describing the seafood in the South, and the giant King Crabs I can buy for just a few dollars. He promises a land void of tourists and overloaded with friendly hospitality. I make a list of the places for future reference and feel disappointed that I won't have time to visit them on this trip.

Tirso doesn't speak English, but he and Swiss Guy start hashing out basic Italian together. This lasts until it is discovered that Tirso speaks very good French and they switch.

I do a quick poll and it turns out that, between the seven of us at the table, there are seven distinct languages. Luckily, only Spanish, English, French, and German are needed to keep the communication flowing with a bare minimum of chaos.

After a relaxing lunch, we head back up into a different part of the region. This time we go trekking through a small canyon. This is different than yesterday. This canyon is quite a bit higher and full of plant life. Even a ghost of the river that formed it still flows through the center as a small but quickly moving stream. The sedimentary layers that make up the walls of the canyon are much milder and less colorful than yesterday.

Oscar points out the various cobalt and sulfur minerals that can be seen in the rocks. He stops in front of a tiny, short, round cactus and picks a large berry. He peels it and offers some to us to try. It is very sour and citric - I like it.

"Good?" Oscar asks us. We nod our heads as we lick the goo from our fingertips. He turns away and continues walking, "Good, you'll all be hallucinating in five minutes."

We all wander off on our own to explore the canyon and climb some rocks. After a while we reconvene toward the mouth of the canyon and head back.

-



Once back in San Pedro, Cornwall and I return to the hostel. I head into the room, and prepare to repack my stuff for travel mode. But a few minutes in, I hear a knock at the door.

I open the door and see Cornwall standing there with a girl. He introduces me. She's from Germany and is also going on the trip to Bolivia tomorrow.

"We were just about to pop out to see if we can exchange some pesos for Bolivianos as we very well might need some tomorrow. Like to come along?"

"Sure. Good idea."

"Plus we have a big box of wine that some Americans left, thought we might come back, sit around the kitchen and drink a bit of it."

I turn and look at the backpack that badly needs repacking. The Motorola is rooting around in it like a mole and is tossing loose socks across the room in hopes that I'll lose them.

"Um, sure. Good idea."

We head out into the street. I had seen a sign for currency exchange above a little shop just a few doors down, so we try there first. The spectacled man sitting at a table at the back of the shop smiles up at me as he quotes a rate - a scandalous and ridiculous rate. I proceed to throw out my typical bartering arguments and persuasions. But, to my horror, the man just goes on smiling and gives me the same rate.

What's going on here? This worked in Salta. But the guy is deflecting my artillery rounds of negotiation like they were ping pong balls. I feel the sweat begin to bead up on the back of my neck and I turn around to consult my Anglo-Prussian army for support. He is pleasant and doesn't speak Spanish. She's tiny, shy, and harmless. Dammit.

I turn back to the guy and tell him we'll need to think about it and return later. The man's friendly smile widens into a grin and he says "Bueno!"

"Go on," that grin is saying, "try and find a better rate. You and your pale friends are trapped here. What are you going to do?"

We shuffle back into the street. The fact is that this is San Pedro de Atacama. Competition isn't a factor. It is tiny. It is tourist.

We hit the main street and try all the agencies that have trips into Bolivia. The rates quoted are even worse than the shop, and I start to resign myself to the fact that we'll have to settle for exploitation over outright rape.

Cornwall mentions he thinks he had seen one other place on the road that passes in the plaza. "Let's just try there, and if nothing else, we go back to the guy's shop." He's right. But I don't look forward to facing defeat.

We duck into a large covered market to cut through town. Either side of the narrow, dark corridor is lined with small booths selling coca leaves, alpaca sweaters, coats, hats, gloves, and all kinds of other items. We come back out on the far road and turn right.

"Ah here it is," says Cornwall. We go inside.

I'm not sure what kind of place this is, but it almost looks like a bank. It is definitely the most modern looking building I've seen in town. We approach a desk where a woman is hanging up her phone and consulting a computer screen.

Almost feebly, I ask for the rate and she answers. I have to ask again.

Not only is the rate far better than what we offered in the dude's shop, it is astonishingly close to the official rate.

"Bless you," I say smiling and fork over my Chilean pesos.

Victory.

Back at the hostel, Cornwall and I sit down at the table with some wine where two French girls are playing cards. They deal us in and teach us the game they are playing - Kilo de Merd. I've got to learn French.

We play for an hour or so, and the French girls leave to go meet some friends. The Polish girl from my room comes in for dinner and the three of us sit and talk. As chance would have it, Poland is also going to Bolivia tomorrow. I thought I had found an off-the-beaten-path way of traveling from Chile to Bolivia. Wrong.

Later, Cornwall has to leave to go on an astronomy tour. There is a renowned French astronomer who works for some of the various observatories around the area. The high altitude and dry air makes for great telescope and radio-telescope observation. In his spare time, he offers tourists to go with him out into the desert with a few assistants and some really expensive equipment to look at stars, nebulae, and planets. I'm dying to go, but I know the eyesight will be in the way.

Cornwall promises to see us in the morning if not before, and heads out. "Carry on with the wine!"

So Poland and I sit and talk about everything and drink wine. Like Cornwall, she is doing an around-the-world trip for one year and is about halfway through. She tells me about Nepal, India, and China.

By eleven, we're both tired and silly from the wine and head back to the room. We both do rushed and slightly tipsy repacks of our stuff and get ready for bed.

I correct and triple-check the time on Motorola and set the alarm. I whisper a threat into the mic, close the phone, and crawl into bed.



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22nd September 2008

Cornwall?
Cornwall?, really. You know someone named Cornwall? Is this fiction?
23rd September 2008

Oh Fran
Originally introduced as "English guy from Cornwall". I don't use real names without permission FRANCIS MCDOOGLESON. I wish that was your name.
23rd September 2008

madrileñas
what happened to the madrileñas? oh yeah, they were madrileñas...
24th September 2008

Espanish
They complained about how Latin Americans speak Spanish, told me I should come back to Madrid, and I never saw them again.

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