Salt of the earth
When exploring San Pedro, I had almost wandered into Bolivia without knowing it, so it was no problem to cross the border the first morning of our three-day excursion. We were still in Chile for another hour or so, however. There was never a sign, but the driver turned off the paved road and onto a dirt track, announcing that we had entered the country. The Bolivian border crossing was the only thing in sight, and it was just a shack with a few flags waving. There wasn’t even a bathroom. A man pointed to an abandoned bus nearby, indicating that it now carries waste instead of passengers.
After a ridiculously lax customs procedure, we were packed into a 4WD jeep with three strangers: a bald Canadian who wouldn’t stop talking, his friend who couldn’t get a word in, and Hiroshi, a Japanese man who thought our guide would speak English. When Julie and I translated his complaints to Crispin, our driver and guide, he told us to ask Hiroshi how much he paid, so he could give the money back and leave him where we were – in the middle of the Atacama Desert. We translated the gist of his reply back to Hiroshi, but assured him that we would help him understand everything Crispin said in Spanish.
That awkward moment made me realize how much we all were at the mercy of Crispin. He was not only our driver and guide, but also the mechanic and cook. Before leaving, I had heard horror stories of drunk drivers and tragic careless mistakes. When Julie crossed the Salar four years ago, her driver spent the nights searching for alternate routes, for rain had completely changed the normal course. He would lie face down and try to catch minutes of sleep as his passengers got out for photographs. Considering these men drive tirelessly the entire year and only earn around 100 USD a month, their current temper and value of life is a crucial factor.
The potential risks aside, I’ve never seen so many amazing landscapes back to back. As we drove through the Altiplano (roughly 15,000 ft high), it was like a race to get to the next spot. The countless parallel lines from tires in the gravel made the flat expanse look like a giant Zen garden. We went from teal lagoons to hot springs, from geysers to the “Arbol de Piedra” and other puzzling rock formations.
I was most impressed by the contrast of random colors with the overwhelmingly dull brown of the ground and mountains. It was like being on another planet. I couldn’t understand how there were chunks of white chemical stuff in a lake of red water, surrounded by green marsh and full of pink flamingoes. Flamingoes! How is that possible? In an area of the world where shrubs barely survive, there are thousands of flamingoes. They seemed to be so out of their element when I first saw them in a lake, but by the end I was surprised if flocks of pink and black weren’t flapping over shallow water.
I was also surprised if there weren’t other tourists at the places we stopped. Gringos and flamingoes – the two constants. The route that the companies take doesn’t differ, but the food, accommodation, and luck does. By lunchtime the first day, another jeep had broken down three times. We passed one with a flaming engine and one with two flat tires. While most companies spent the last night in Uyuni, the final destination, we slept in an incredible salt hotel on the edge of the flats.
The first two days were beautiful, but the best was surely saved for last. There’s nothing like the Salar de Uyuni – the largest salt flat in the world. On a map of Bolivia, it’s just an enormous patch of white.
We were at the entrance for sunrise the third day. A thin layer of water above the salt reflected the changing sky as well as crosses marking deaths. Salt water splashed up into our mouths as we drove through that part to get to the dry flat. Once there, it was like driving on ice; the salt is 25-feet thick in some sections. We got out of the jeep to take it all in…and taste some of course. It was a visual masterpiece. A winter wonderland of pepper’s sidekick. All white except for our elongated shadows. Stunning. Eerie. Hallucinogenic. A group of tourists went blind from crossing the Salar without sunglasses.
The only things that perforated the flat whiteness were another salt hotel, a coral island covered with cacti, and pyramids of extracted salt. We stopped to check out all three, though the latter sticks with me the most. After weaving my way through the giant cones, I befriended a lady shoveling and asked if I could lighten her load for a bit. While I scooped up salt to add to the pile, she explained that they form pyramids to allow water to seep back into the ground. She told me it takes her an hour to make just one, for which she gets less than a quarter. She makes around ten a day. Every day.
It’s a given that there’ll be salt in every household cupboard and on every restaurant table, but what seems like a most basic ingredient is in fact the product of strenuous labor. From now on, there will be a face with the shaker.