When my mum, aunt and uncle told me that they might come to visit us in South America, I was, naturally, very excited. As time went by everything fell into place and the trip began to become a reality. I also began to realise that organising a three week trip for the older generation of my family was not going to be the simplest thing in the world. Erika and I organised to have the time off work by basically finishing the website (www.artesaniasorata.com) before they arrived. Things began to get a little more complicated when about a month before the deadline Erika finally got so pissed off with the behaviour of our boss that she walked off the project and totally refused to have anything else to do with it. Unsurprisingly the pressure had already been building as we approached the deadline we had set ourselves, but this sent it through the roof. I realised that I would have to finish building the website by myself, still having to contend with the ideosyncrasies of the Bolivian work ethic; one of my favourites being that whenever I requested a meeting to work on a particular aspect of the project our boss would give me a day but when I tried to narrow it down further I would be told that she didn´t like times and could we just say that it would be in the morning. She would roll in at 3 in the afternoon, not having rung to say she would be late, and find me sitting on my hands and swearing alot and then wonder what on earth had wound me up so much.
Erika went off to the far east of Bolivia with a friend to travel around the wonderful missionary circuit, visiting little remote villages in the jungle and pampas, barely visited by tourists, where the Jesuits had had a profound impact on the culture. I slowly sank up to my eyeballs in work and every now and again tried to think about the best way to go about the upcoming visit. I spoke to one of my climbing friends about the tours for older german tourists that he works on. Mike is a little dreadlocked and goateed austrian who has been living in La Paz for about five years, guiding trips such as three weeks overland from Lima to Sao Paulo. He told me that the most impotant thing is just to try to relax, he often finds himself waking up in the middle of the night screaming for someone to get on the train, only to realise that he is in his own bed and the tour finished three days before. It did not bode well and made me realise just how stressful tours can be.
As the website slowly began to be filled with content and the stress eased, a plan took shape in my head. When my Mum arrived we would relax in La Paz for a day or two and then head down to the tropical village of Coroico and do very little in the cloud forest and coffee plantations until my uncle and aunt arrived from Peru and we went to meet them in Copacabana (the town cathedral can be seen in the photo above). From there we would dash down south to the Argentinian border and then make our way back via the salt flats. This meant covering alot of ground in not alot of time but would allow them to see alot of the highlights of Bolivia, or at the very least the diversity that the country contains.
The day came for Mum to arrive in the middle of the night. I checked my email during the day and found a message telling us that her plane had been delayed in Madrid and that she would write further once she knew more. As the day went on we didn´t recieve anymore emails and quickly realised that we didn´t have her flight number. Her connecting flight from Lima to La Paz was due to arrive at three in the morning but we knew that if she was delayed at all she would be unlikely to make it. As it got to six o´clock in the evening and still no further emails we had to do something, as we had no phone to be contacted on. The only thing we could do was to go around the various airline offices asking if anyone had any information on where she was. Iberia, who had got her stuck in Madrid, of course had no office in La Paz and with the five hour time difference their european offices were now closed. So we started checking on all the flights that that would be coming in for Lima asking if anyone called Mo Gurney was booked onto any of their flights in the coming days. After an hour and a half of frantic pleading to get the airline staff to give us information that they are not meant to, in a number of offices, we finally came up trumps and found out that we should go to collect her from the airport the next night. The whole following day there were no further emails, so when we went up to the airport and saw her coming into the arrivals lounge we were more than relieved.
Watching her reactions as we wandered around the street markets that seem to occupy half of La Paz was amazing. Living somewhere you become used to the things that are there, but I felt as if I could see the city through her eyes and experience her excitement at coming to the other side of the world direct from Europe. As we walked around the city her camera rattled through film after film and she seemed enchanted by life in the streets. From there we went down to the lower altitudes and country life of Coroico. Staying in a group of cabins in the midst of beautiful tropical gardens perched on the side of a mountain above the town we really began to relax.
From there we headed to the shores of lake Titicaca. It was on the shores of the crystal clear lake you can see above that we met my aunt and uncle and prepared for the next leg of our trip. We spent a day walking the length of the Isla del Sol, legend has it the birthplace of the Inca nation. As Erika and I tried to size up how strong everybody was we soon realised that Steve was suffering from a lingering stomach complaint and each further hours walking seemed to drain further colour from his face. As he approached the colour of the zombies in 70´s horror films, we began to realise that we would have to take it easy physically. That night Juliet, my aunt, was caught out by a violent fever and we realised that we were not going to be able to go anywhere for a while. We wandered around the cathedral and lake shore you can see above, and a couple of days later were able to carefully make our way into La Paz. Once Juliet was back up to full strength we caught a bus to Oruro, where we found a fiesta in full swing and crowding the streets of the city. We went and bought our tickets, we had tried to book them in advance but had come up against classic South American logic; you can buy tickets in advance but only if you can present payment in the station, someone else can bring the money in for you but without the money being in the possesion of the station controller you cannot reserve a seat. We found that, after queueing for more than an hour, at 11 in the morning for a train not leaving until eight in the evening there were only two seats left in the second class carriages so the rest of us would have to travel third class. We went into town and watched the procession go by and were interviewed by a very excited TV crew who could not understand why we wouldn´t be back in Oruro for the carnival if we were enjoying this little fiesta so much.
That evening we climbed on board the train and found our seats. I immediately headed back into town to get some alcohol for those of us in third class. The four of us travelling in that class found that the seats that had been allocated for us were basically only big enough to fit two of us. The seats were bench seats facing one another, each was so narrow that even where two tiny Bolivians were trying to fit onto one bench the one on the isle side would still have one bumcheek suspended in the air, unable to squeeze it onto the tiny bench seat. European sized people simply had no hope.
We drank our beer and spread ourselves over as many seats as we could in the hope that no one would try to move us. As we pulled out of the station we congratulated one another on the fact that the four of us had managed to occupy ten peoples’ seats and were getting comfortably drunk. After an hour we pulled into the first station, people poured onto the train returning home after the end of a week long conference and we quickly realised that our short lived comfort had come to an end. We perched on our benches and realised that somehow we needed to find a position comfortable enough to spend the night, maybe even sleep, and there was no chance of these benches reclining. As soon as I started to feel sleepy I realised that my best chance was simply to get everyone to lift their feet and to lie on the floor between the seats, across the aisle with my feet under the feet of the people sitting opposite. Erika sat in the aisle itself, using the base of a bench as a back rest. While Steve and Hannah, an English traveller we had picked up on the way, tried to get to sleep sitting on our seats. Surprisingly enough I would be hard pushed to describe it as anything other than a hellish night of sleep. But somehow or other we all woke up smiling and still laughing at our misfortune as we gazed out at the sunrise over the brightly coloured deserts of Southern Bolivia and ate our fill of the incredible hot tamales (a ball of maize dough filled with spiced llama meat) that women would climb onto the train to sell at each station.
We arrived at the oasis town of Tupiza feeling that the train had brought us a world away from the high mountains and cold of the altiplano and La Paz. The landscape you can see above is typical of the desert area surrounding Tupiza. A land of dry riverbeds, sand and strange jagged rock formations jutting up from the plains. As was our habit in Bolivian towns the first thing we did was to head to the central market, the focus of life in any town or village, and there we found the most wonderful fresh papaya and banana licuados and realised this was going to be a place to enjoy.
On our second day there we decided to walk into an area of gorges away from the lush oasis of the town and into the middle of the desert. We set out early carrying plenty of water, some lunch and one of the worst maps it has ever been my misfortune to use. We realised how bad it was as soon as we tried to get away from town following the road clearly marked on the map. The road took us to the edge of town and then disappeared into the middle of an enormous military base, which we could neither enter nor cross. We asked the soldiers where we should go and the basic answer seemed to be that we should head back into town. We started to walk around the military base and ask anyone we saw which direction we should head in to reach the gorge. We finally found someone who seemed to know that we needed to follow the valley we were in, but in the other direction. We turned around and started skirting the other side of the military base, carefully avoiding the watchful eyes of the soldiers on guard duty. The suggestion of a path that we were following then set off along the floor of the valley, we soon realised that it was taking us straight across the military firing range, we just had to hope that it was more than just an impression that it was not in use right at that second.
In a couple of hours we had reached the amazing rock fin that marked the beginning of the gorges. A hundred meters long, 20 high and never more than a couple of meters thick at the base, this piece of red sandstone stuck up from the desert floor like the fossilised remains of some enormous prehistoric creature´s dorsal fin. The floor of the gorge began to be covered in enormous flowering cacti and thornbushes, in the midst of one of these bushes we spotted a hummingbird that, unfeasibly, seemed to be almost the size of a pigeon. The rock formations continued to get stranger as we entered el valle de los machos; here some strange erosion had caused boulders to be sat on the top of pillars ten meters high, as if they had been lifted onto a natural pedestal far above the surface of the ground.
Soon the floor of the main gorge began to narrow, until it was little more than a few meters across but more than fifty deep. We found ourselves climbing up little dry waterfalls and I coached my mother into doing things she would never have normally considered. The beauty of the place was so strong and other worldly that the idea of leaving it didn´t make sense to any of us. Before long we were searching for ways to clamber through huge piles of boulders that had fallen from the sides of the gorge above and blocked our path. The photo below is my aunt, Juliet, making her way through one of these piles of boulders.
As we continued walking up the ever narrowing gorge, scrambling and climbing across or through any obstacles that got in our way, my Mum was gradually getting more and more elated. She has had problems with her knees for many years so the idea of such an adventurous days hiking had not been a possibility for a long time. She was managing to not only make her way, but to do it without any problems or pain, much to her own surprise. The photo below is her celebrating with her sister and my uncle.
After spending another couple of days in Tupiza the six of us piled into a thirty year old nissan 4×4 and set off on a four day tour that would take us around the south west of Bolivia. Travelling on nothing but dirt tracks we would follow first the border with Argentina and then head north along the border with Chile finally moving back into the center of Bolivia across the salt flats to finish in Uyuni. The journey would take four days and we had been forewarned not to expect any comfort, as we watched groups returning to town after four days in the desert and literally falling out of the 4×4s surrounded by clouds of dust we were assured the warnings were valid. The six of us were accompanied by a wonderful little pair of Bolivians, neither more than five feet tall, who worked like trojans and spent all their time playing with one another or us. Their enjoyment of life was infectious and as we made our way across the desert we all felt our spirits lifting despite the dust and potholes.
The landscape we were crossing was arid and wind swept but full of the most amazing natural forms I have ever seen. The shapes and colours of the rocks, mountains and lakes were so strong and so strange that you often found yourself questioning your eyes. Lifting your sunglasses up and squinting at things to make sure that the landscape really did look like that and it wasn´t an optical illusion. Many of the views were pure camera candy and we often felt that if you put the camera down for a second you may regret it for the rest of your life. The lake below, Laguna Colorada, is red from the mineral in the soil that have dissolved into the water and the water is very warm, the lake is surrounded by thermal springs from which steaming hot water flows along black channels until it reaches the main body of water.
Many of these lakes are very rich in certain mineral salts that allow krill to flourish and attract huge flocks of flamingoes. These bright pink birds are perfectly suited to the peculiar landscapes. Watching them dipping their beaks into the strangely coloured waters and sifting the water was an absolute pleasure. The photo below shows an alpaca grazing the yellowed grass around the edge of one of the lakes with a few flamingoes close by and the fringes of a huge flock dotting the distant shore behind them amoungst white salt deposits.
The lakes, like every aspect of the landscape in this area, seemed to come in all the colours you could imagine. The lake below is Laguna Verde, although in truth it appeared to be more a strong turquoise than a green.
The mountains made sure that they were not to be outdone by the lakes lying at their feet. Everywhere you looked you could see streaks of bright colours striping the sides of the mountains as they cascaded down to the floor of the plains that the volcanoes sprang up from.
The huge distances we were covering each day, on one day driving for more than twelve hours, and seeing at most one or two tiny villages of perhaps 5 or 10 houses, generally next to some sort of mine, demonstrated just how desolate these inhospitable areas are. Often when we saw animals such as the vicuña, a wild cousin of the llama, we would not be able to see a plant anywhere in our field of vision. Our guide and driver soon demonstrated that even in this moonscape animals can find things to eat as he pointed out minute purple flowers, barely a milimeter or two across, growing on the level of the ground that the vicuñas could live on. Dotting this landscape at regular intervals appeared to be the lands failed attempts to create life. Rock formations that defied explanation and looked as if they had come into being straight from Dali´s canvas. To the right of the one below you can see Hannah running across the plain and if you look carefully on the lefthand side of the rock formation, you can just make out me climbing to the top.
On the fourth day of the tour we reached the salt flats. They cover an area of 12,000 square kilometers, larger than Holland, and the difference between the highest and lowest point is less than 40cm. They are a crust of salt as hard as concrete that has crystalised on the top of a very large and extremely saline lake. We were able to drive across the surface of the salt as if it were a perfectly finished strip of asphalt, so wide that it disappeared into the distance ahead of us. At one point we stopped next to some holes that had been made in the surface of the salar and found to our surprise that the crust was less than a meter thick and just below the surface of the salt were crystals in the shape of perfect cubes each more than a centimeter across. We got up early enough to watch the sun rise over the salt flats. The photo below is of the shadow cast by people standing with their legs spread as the sun climbs above the surface of the salar behind them.
Such a flat, blindingly white and endless surface destroys our sense of perspective and makes it almost impossible to judge the distance between objects. Using this loss of perspective Erika got to do something she has been dreaming about for longer than I care to imagine.
Finally we got to the other side of the salt flats and reached Uyuni, a sad town that was once a center of the South American rail industry. Just outside the town is the train graveyard, where the old steam trains were brought as the railways declined. They were abandoned in the middle of the desert, but the lack of rain there has meant that they have not rusted and simply sit there like old soldiers left behind by an ancient civilization. To climb over these hulking reminders of a bygone age is and unforgettable experience and a fitting end to a wonderful tour of Bolivia with my family. (the grafitti on the battered train below reads “asi es la vida” which translates roughly as “such is life”)
