Now leaving planet Earth...
A journey through the bizarre, alien landscape of the
high Bolivian desert
The cold, thin air burned my throat with every breath,
barely providing enough oxygen to hold back the black fingers that
were clawing at the edge of my vision. I trod carefully on the damp
cracked earth, fearing a collapse with every step. All around me thick
clouds of steam poured from dark holes that riddled the frost covered
ground – bubbling mud pots and hissing fumaroles that were letting
loose their full fury, saturating the air with the stench of sulphur.
Occasionally the swirling mass of vapour would part, dazzling me with
the light of a distant, yet blinding sun. As the yellow orb crept
higher in the sky, its warming rays poured like molten steel over
the frozen hills, immersing everything in a fiery furnace of orange
and red. I could see why they called this place ‘Tomorrow’s
Sun’.
If you have ever dreamed of walking the surface of another planet,
or if you have ever imagined watching the sunrise over a bizarre,
alien landscape, a trip to the far southwest of Bolivia could help
you realize this fantasy. In this forgotten corner of a forgotten
country, you will find a landscape that would confound the fevered
imaginings of Salvador Dali himself; in fact, the locals have even
named a section of the desert in his honour.
The gateway to this region is the town of Uyuni – a singularly
grey, barren and dusty place, isolated in the middle of an immense
desert that ranges between altitudes of 13,000 to 16,000 ft. Even
fellow Bolivians, a people renowned for their resilience to extreme
climates, shun Uyuni. Mention its name in conversation and you will
illicit one response, “Mucho frio!” – “Really
cold!”
Yet, Uyuni has found itself with a burgeoning tourist industry. Word
is spreading of the breathtaking landscape that surrounds the town.
Tours into the ‘altiplano’, or ‘high plane’,
now depart daily, although they remain rough and ready affairs to
say the least. Maybe in the future there will be a more luxurious
alternative, but for now expect to be crammed like a sardine into
a beat up old four wheel drive vehicle for four days, eating the finest
dehydrated and canned foods that Bolivia has to offer.
Despite
all of the discomforts we endured, the spectacular sights that began
upon leaving Uyuni made it all worthwhile. Our first stop was the
great salar - a remnant of a prehistoric lake that dried up thousands
of years ago, leaving behind the largest salt desert in the world.
It started as a thin strip of white on the horizon, growing steadily
larger and brighter as we approached, swallowing up the whole world
once we were upon it. My eyes could pick out no detail on the flat,
featureless surface; there was no sensation of movement or depth.
Determining where we had come from, or how far we had to go, was impossible.
It was like standing on the surface of a cold, white sun; there was
just a flat white light shining from below, brighter even than the
sky above. The only discernible features were the finely etched mesh
of hexagonal tiles stretching away to the horizon, and the dim silhouette
of Volcano Tunupa in the distance. It was the ultimate void, a place
of perfect desolation.
But the salar was not entirely featureless. In its centre lay a handful
of islands that provided an unlikely haven for life. Tall, fluffy
Trichocerus cacti covered their rocky shores and rabbit-like viscachas
hopped to and fro between the boulders. The largest island, ironically
named ‘Isla de Los Pescadores’, or ‘Fisherman’s
Island’, was even home to a few llamas and an old Aymara woman,
although something tells me that their survival has more to do with
the passing travellers than the abundance of fish.
It took the better part of a day to cross the salar, so we spent the
first night in the village of San Juan. Hard as it is to believe,
many villages dot the altiplano. The Aymara people, who have lived
there for centuries, somehow manage to scratch a living from the barren
desert, despite the fact that their stunted fields of potatoes and
quinoa looked like they would barely provide enough food for the local
llamas. Their strong spirit has resisted the will of many foreign
invaders, from the Inca to the Spanish, and to this day, their ancient
language and spiritual beliefs still dominate community life. They
are a people as timeless and implacable as the landscape in which
they live.
Leaving
the salar behind, we began the climb into a cold, treeless volcanic
desert. Far from any recognizable vestiges of humanity, scoured by
the icy wind, we followed a pair of lonely tire tracks through a wide,
rocky plain. Here nature painted with its most vivid colours. Sulphur
and iron stained the mountains red, yellow and purple. Smoke belched
from the peaks of numerous volcanoes whose slopes were scarred and
deformed from the violence of previous eruptions. Strange rocks, carved
out over millennia by the relentless wind, grew like petrified trees
from the sterile soil. In a place totally devoid of animal or plant,
it seemed instead that the earth had come to life and begun to evolve
according to its own rules.
Every desert must have its oasis, and in this case it was a shallow
lake named ‘Laguna Colorada’ – ‘Coloured Lake’.
As the name suggested, the water there was blood red - its colour
derived from a variety of algae that populate its mineral rich waters.
Fringing the lake, in stark contrast to its crimson body, were brilliant
deposits of borax. Howling winds kicked up the white dust into great
twisting vortices – ethereal sentinels that patrolled the lake’s
lonely shores.
It
was perhaps the strangest sight I had ever beheld, yet what lay within
the lake caused me to rub my eyes in even greater disbelief. Circling
overhead and gathering in noisy groups in the centre of the water
were large colonies of pink flamingos. These beautiful birds, with
their delicate pink necks and slender yellow beaks, could not have
looked more out of place. Yet, they were flourishing, feeding on algae
that live in the mineral rich water, a living testament to the resilience
and adaptability of life.
We spent our second night beside the lake, leaving at 5 am the following
morning. From the lakeshore, we climbed steadily beneath a blanket
of frigid stars, only the twin beams of our headlights visible in
the impenetrable darkness. Sunrise approached and the sky began to
brighten, revealing great clouds of steam that were pouring from the
ground ahead of us. This was ‘Sol de Mañana’ –
‘Tomorrow’s Sun’, a geyser basin that sat at over
16,000 ft. The volatility of the altiplano became very apparent as
we stood in the midst of this volcanic maelstrom. It seemed like a
thin crust of earth was holding back all the fury of hell; never before
have I felt so insecure on solid ground.
After
sunrise, we began our final descent. Following a long chain of snowy
mountains, we arrived at the shores of ‘Laguna Verde’
– ‘Green Lake’, a brilliant splash of jade that
sits beneath the brooding, cloud wreathed figure of Volcano Licancabur.
High concentrations of lead and sulphur give this lake its bright
green colour, maintaining it in a liquid state even at constant below-freezing
temperatures. Howling winds, coming up from the deserts of Chile,
ceaselessly scour the lake, whipping up the water until it fizzes
and froths like a can of soda. As we stood and looked out over its
dazzling lime-green surface, great lumps of white foam tumbled through
the air, floating past us gently like feathers on the breeze.
Our final stop was for breakfast on the more familiar shores of Laguna
Blanca. We warmed ourselves with coffee and scrambled eggs, watching
the shadows of clouds play across the surface of the surprisingly
ordinary-looking water. It was a small patch of normality in an unrelentingly
weird landscape, a place that had shattered my preconceptions of how
the world was supposed to look. The next time I dream of visiting
alien worlds, I will look a little closer to home, for it seems that
this planet has greater imagination than I had ever suspected.
