Salar de Uyuni

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Trip Start Oct 11, 2006 Previous
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  Uyuni, Bolivia
Saturday, December 9, 2006

Well, we have officially switched from drinking mate to chewing coca leaves.  It works wonders too, relieving altitude headaches and giving you just the boost of enengy you need!  When we crossed the border into Bolivia we were amazed at how an invisible line could change everything.  The women are dressed in bright bussled skirts.  Their black derby hats sit on the very top of their heads looking two-sizes too small, and a pair of long black braids hang down their backs, tied together at the bottom with tastles.  They carry their babies on their backs in beautiful old blankets with bright bands of animals and geometric designs woven in the alpaca wool.  The men have dark faces with deep lines around the corners of their eyes from years of squinting in the bright sunlight.  We are the only ones here wearing sunglasses, and our eyes even got sunburned behind them!  Crossing the border, the lower level of development in Bolivia is immediately evident.  Most of the toilets donīt flush, you have to pour a bucket of water into them

Buffy relaxing on the salt furniture

.  Less than 5% of the roads are paved, and less than a quarter are gravel-surfaced.  There are no fences.  Every mixed herd of llamas, alpacas, vicunas, and sheep are tended by a shepherd, or rotated through pastures enclosed by hand built stone walls. 

We borded the Express del Sur, one of Boliviaīs few trains, at la frontera and headed north.  The train climbed up to the altiplano passing through canyons, by farms and volcanoes, and towns that seem to have grown straight out of the earth surrounding them.  We saw signs of the rural-urban migration everywhere: little ghost towns full of stone houses, mostly missing their thatched roofs and empty of people, churches that sit closed on Sundays because there are not enough people to hold mass, and empty futbol fields.  Nearly all the people in traditional dress are older (ages are hard to guess in this harsh climate--40 can look 70);  the lack of youth living traditionally hints at the passing of unknown traditions, a worrisome trend seen around the world.

We climbed off the train at midnight in Uyuni, a small mining town on the edge of the worldīs highest and largest salt flats: the Salar de Uyuni.  In the morning a  jeep drove us out into the blinding vast white sea of salt, stopping to show us the little hut where the salt is dried out over wood fire, ground up and iodized, then bagged and sold for 50 kilos/$1.50

Colorful goods

.  We visited an island with thousand year old cactuses towering over our heads, and crossed the flats to the base of the colorful Volcan Tunupa where we slept in a hotel made entirely of salt: salt brick walls, salt beds, salt furniture, and a granular salt floor.  Our novice guide, a local thirteen year old boy, took us hiking up the volcano in the morning.  We hiked up about a thousand feet before making our first stop in the cliff walls above a dry river bed.  We climbed over a stone wall blocking the entrance to a dark cave where 10 years ago a group of seven mummies were discovered.  It looked like a whole family had been burried in the cave together with a feast of food for their next life.  From there, we climbed several hours further up into the thin air and hot sun, where we reached some strange slopes devoid of vegetation but, like everywhere, full of volcanic cobble.  Under some of the rocks were sun-bleached pieces of paper rustling in the breeze, around the field shrubs had been burned to the ground, and pieces of plastic and paper were tied all along strings surrounding the site.  We speculated that maybe it was some type of cemetery or that people had written down their deseos on the pieces of paper, and the strings of plastic were like prayer flags, when Wilmer, our guide, explained that it was a field of potatoes, and all of the paper and plastic was to scare the llamas away.  We looked closer and saw the bright green plants coming up out of the dry soil.  Each one had been carefully planted in a hole painstakingly cleared of rocks, and individually multched with a long clump of bunchgrass held down with a rock to wait for rain.  We looked down the slopes of the volcano covered with stone walls at the little village, just a spec in the distance below, and began to understand why so many of Wilmerīs fellow townspeople have moved to the city.    

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Fun on the salt flats	Incan mummy	Mujer boliviana	My sweet baby
Riding the Express del Sur	Tilcara street	Volcan Tunupa	Volcan Tunupa from Isla del Pescado

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