Tortuga Travels: Week Six: Uyuni to La Paz, Bolivia

Tortuga Travels: Week Six: Uyuni to La Paz, Bolivia

La Paz, Bolivia

10 a.m. Saturday morning we meet at To�oto Tours in Uyuni, home of transient tourists and those that provide them with overpriced pizzas. The Dutch couple finishing a 15 month round-the-world trip, the Swiss postwoman on six week holiday, the German engineering student volunteering in Ecuador, the American girl who grew up in Bolivia and I pile into the Land Cruiser – packs on top in tarp, cameras and bottled water inside. Off we go.

Six hours straight across the Uyuni Salar, a plain of salt stretching from horizon to horizon left by a vast ancient lake. The ground is a desolate blinding white crust that looks like ice through the jeep windows, but it’s 70 degrees out. Up to 17 meters of water lies below the thick salt skin, and in places it breaks though the surface in glistening crystal puddles.

We eat lunch on Isla de Pescadores, a random outcropping of vegetated hillside in a sea of salt, and drive for the rest of the afternoon to reach the sparse town of San Juan just past the Salar’s stark shoreline.

By 8 we have eaten and found a pub, the sleeping town’s only light. Phillip prods us to play “ja nunca” (I never) but Sylvia says it’s a little too soon for that.

The next three days are half the U.S. national parks rolled into one: a rainbow of lakes – emerald green, fiery red, milky white – geysers, boiling mud pots. We bathe in the hot springs and gawk at the misplaced flamingos who inhabit these harsh mountainous altitudes. Sudden fields of wind sculpted boulders (“Dali Valley”) sprout from miles of sand. The air is so thin here above 4000 meters that the climb up to my bunk bed leaves me winded. Llamas, alpacas, guanacacos and vicu�as – all different flavors of Andean cameloid – stare wide eyed as we pass.

Sylvia flirts mindlessly with Phillip (“It’s hard travelling in these little buses when I’m 5’8″…”). Are girls always this transparent? Michel and Suzanna still take pictures together in front of landmarks after more than a year on the road. Each nite our driver Walter pulls on overalls to tune the Toyota, while his wife Rosemary slips on an apron to bring us a freshly prepared dinner.

Meanwhile Carrie, who took the Salar tour last year, stays in Uyuni to sketch. She visits the old train graveyard and the abandoned mining town of Pulacayo.

We meet up again midweek to catch the overnight train to Oruro. The train leaves at midnight but the town is dead by 10, so for two hours dozens of tourists huddle around the walls of the freezing station while soldiers – who insist that the four sets of double doors all remain propped open to the cold wind – strut around in their insulated gear smoking cigarettes. At last we take our seats in first class (identical to second class but sold to foreigners for a higher price) behind two loud Germans reeking of alcohol and constantly moving their seats. We sleep fitfully in the dust filled, overheated car.

Oruro is waking up at 6 a.m. and we walk sleepily past the opening market to the bus station for the three hour trip to La Paz. They show George of the Jungle in Spanish and a woman sells fried potato dumplings in the aisle. We practically run from the bus to the taxi and then to Jacqueline’s apartment, where Carrie will be living for the next two months. Never have hot showers or a washing machine seemed so indulgent.

The plan is to take off for Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca the next morning, but a country wide strike of transportation workers empties the roads. We walk to the contemporary art museum where Carrie buys a framed Frida Kahlo reproduction for $15; the attendant pulls it directly off the gallery wall as we stand gaping. A quick stop at the todos 15 b.s! store for supplies and we head home to pack.

I have just one more week in Bolivia before I head up to Costa Rica – enough for the round trip to the lake with a few days cushion in case of blockades. It’s a different sort of schedule you learn to keep in Bolivia…