The Wonders of Sodium Chloride (Santa Cruz, Bolivia)

Salt salt salt. And volcanos and lakes and flamingos and llamas and altitude sickness and hypothermia and frostbite and geysers and pizza and so much fun. The trip from Chile was phenomenal. All the tour companies that do the 4 wheel drive jeep trip between San Pedro de Atacama and Uyuni, Bolivia get sketchy reports at best. The survivors I´ve met have all complained of crowded jeeps, extreme cold, breakdowns, and hunger so it was with a bit of apprehension that I turned over my hard-earned cash to the hungover man at Estrella del Sur. Little did I know my good luck. Irish friends architect Tracy and environmental engineer Mark, and English, but living in Australia geologist Will all made the same shot in the dark decision and we met on the street in San Pedro early last Monday morning ready to go. Granted, nobody from the tour company showed up for another 30 minutes, but whatever. Eventually we piled in to a van and off we climbed into the Andes.

We met Marcos, our nearly-toothless driver, and his 4 x 4 jeep at the Bolivian border, a shack perched on a windy peak and topped with a Bolivian flag. Whereas some trips run with 6 or 7 passengers, we escaped with a mere and roomy 4. We had a great chatty first day driving through the mountains surrounded by volcanos and spectacular scenery. We stopped at a lake bright green with copper and slept next to another bright red with algae. There were crazy rock formations in the sand that inspired Dali paintings and llamas and their smaller wild cousins, vicunos, in the road, or rather the car tracks, because to call it an actual road is a vast exaggeration. There were hot springs for swimming at lunch (or dangling feet for those who have had their bathings suits stolen by cruel and thoughtless Argentinians) and a geyser field at 4950 meters full of bubbling mud in cracked earth, hot steam, and a complete absence of signage, warnings, barriers, or any semblance of safety controls. We tested Will on everything he ever learned earning his geology degree and got lots of information about the hows and whys of our remarkable surroundings. The altitude was something else. A short climb up a steep hill to watch the sun set was a slow panting affair in chappingly high winds. We arrived at our concrete shack exhausted and ate a giggly dinner of spaghetti discussing whether or not altitude could produce a deep diving-esque nitrogen narcosis or something similar and thus explain our ridiculously easily-amused state of uncontrollable laughter. After attempting to warm our popsicle bodies with herbal tea, we set about raiding the place for blankets. We were the only guests so we helped ourselves. The temperature was reported to be -10 Celsius even though we were down to a mere 4400 meters. Since everyone else had sleeping bags and mine is somewhere in Argentina with the bathing suit, I got the most blankets. 8. Most of them folded in half for extra warmth. I slept in long underwear, pants, socks, 4 shirts, the snazzy new llama-decorated Alpaca sweater, and my jacket. Or attempted to sleep anyway. It was kind of bunchy and the weight of the blankets made it hard for my lungs to expand properly, but we all survived with fingers and toes intact so we were thrilled.

The second day was more amazing scenery - partially frozen salt lakes, flamingos, more volcanos, lava beds, and the beginning of the salt flats crossed at one point by train tracks that looked like they went from absolutely nowhere to nowhere. We spent the night in a hotel built entirely from cinderblocks of salt. The walls, interior and exterior, the beds, the tables, the chairs, all salt. The floors were loose rock salt. We drank bolivian wine and ate quinoa soup made from quinoa grown just down the way, and llama. Yes, llama, let´s not talk about it. We were dirty but it was still too cold to shower. Small bolivian children in ponchos, llama hats like my sweater, and bare feet played pan flutes and danced for us. In the morning we got up in the dark and piled into the jeep to go watch the sunrise.

We stopped as the horizon turned orange and red and pink and reflected perfectly in the little bit of water that blanketed the ground of 6 meter deep, thick solid white salt. We took pictures. Lots of pictures. Then we drove a little further to a cactus-covered island in the endless salt. Hard to imagine? Yes. AMAZING. Trust me. By the time we hiked up to the top of the island the sun was blinding and Marcos had made us fluffy pancakes. After breakfast we walked around the island. We stopped to take pictures of each other doing stupid things in the vast whiteness and of words we spelled with our own shadows. Namely ´salt´ and ´love´ because they had 4 letters and we knew how to spell them. When we got back in the jeep we started to mourn the conclusion of our adventure. It wasn´t long before we arrived in Uyuni, Bolivia, a town that could easily pass for the end of the earth. Marcos took us to the one tourist attraction, an abandoned field of rusted out old trains strewn with trash that supposedly blows out of the dump (why not build a higher fence around the dump then I ask?), and then dropped us at the fanciest hotel in town. A room for 4 cost us $12 each, a major splurge for Bolivia believe it or not. We showered, finally, ran all sorts of errands and when we couldn´t come up with anything else to do, we hit the bar downstairs. Called Minuteman Pizza with taglines that include words like ´revolutionary´ I was alone in my Americanness to fully appreciate the glory. Yes, Minuteman Pizza is owned and run by a man from Amherst, Massachusetts. He married a Bolivian, he lives at the end of the earth, surrounded by flatness, dryness, and salt, and he makes delicious pesto pizza. I kid you not. It was a great night.

The next morning, with the adventure really over, we all hopped on a bus to Potosi. Will continued on to Sucre and Tracy and Mark and I spent the night in what was once the richest city in Latin America, and depending on who you ask, on the planet. It´s mining territory and the next morning we subjected ourselves to an 8 hour tour of the biggest mine around. We knew the conditions for the miners were poor, but we had no idea what we were really getting ourselves into. The mines are cooperative meaning the miners all work in groups, but for themselves, so there´s no governing body and absolutely no safety regulations. We got helmets and headlamps and too big galoshes and an annoying guide from the tour company and we were off. We took coca leaves and pop and sticks of dynamite we bought for $1 on the street to the miners as payment/gifts for letting us in and we spent the day crawling through tiny tunnels and sliding down steep shafts finding working areas and asking questions. Most of the miners die from lung diseases within 10 or 15 years of starting work in the mines and most of them start working at 12 or 14, but there are some older ones around too. Those are the guys who work shirtless and helmetless alone and in pitch blackness so as not to waste their lamp batteries. It was hot and dusty and really hard to breathe and at times it was super stressful, like when you could feel dynamite exploding nearby or when a 2 ton cart of ore was speeding down the track and people were yelling at you to run faster faster to the next corner where you could get off the track and not get crushed to death, but it was very very interesting and a worthwhile experience in the end. Afterwards our guide lit up some extra dynamite and tossed it down the hillside so we could watch it explode right next to an approaching truck. Then we ate dinner and took a taxi to Sucre.

Sucre is a pretty, white-washed sort of colonial town with a lovely plaza filled with shoe-shine boys and a pleasant vibe. Lots of people go there to study Spanish. We went to see the Sunday market in nearby Tarabuco which is an amazing spectacle of local villagers in a thousand different sorts of hats and headdresses buying vegetables. It was the prettiest market I´ve ever seen and though there are a million tourists dropped there every Sunday, they seem to spread out and blend in and you don´t notice them amidst the rainbow of ponchos and skirts and tomatoes and oranges and yuca and swaddled up babies. I love a good market. We found Will again, in our hostel not surprisingly - same guidebook, same choices - and went to dinner together that night. Yesterday Mark and Tracy and I took the Dino-Truck, a roofed pickup, to see the biggest paleontological site on the planet. Real live dinosaur tracks in the middle of a real live cement factory! Leave it to Bolivia. Mining explosions alternate throughout the day with tours of the brontosaurus and velociraptor tracks. It was impressive and hilarious.

A goodbye to new week-long Irish friends and a nightbus to normally elevated tropical Santa Cruz, and you´re up to date. This morning I went to the zoo where there seemed to be as many animals running about out of cages as in them (mostly sloths and unidentifiable giant guinnea pig-things) and then I walked around town and the pretty plaza and now I´m here writing this. That´s it. Tomorrow I head to a small town nearby with waterfalls and then further into the jungle... Love to all. Miss you, d.